certbot

package: certbot

title: certbot(7)

summary: Certbot Documentation

text:
# certbot(7)

## NAME
certbot - Certbot Documentation

## INTRODUCTION
Note:

To get started quickly, use the interactive installation guide <https://certbot.eff.org>.

[image: Azure Pipelines CI status] [image]

<https://dev.azure.com/certbot/certbot/_build?definitionId=5> [image: EFF Certbot Logo] [image]

Certbot is part of EFF’s effort to encrypt the entire Internet. Secure communication over the Web relies on HTTPS, which requires the use of a digital certificate that lets browsers verify the identity of web servers (e.g., is that really google.com?). Web servers obtain their certificates from trusted third parties called certificate authorities (CAs). Certbot is an easy-to-use client that fetches a certificate from Let’s Encrypt—an open certificate authority launched by the EFF, Mozilla, and others—and deploys it to a web server.

Anyone who has gone through the trouble of setting up a secure website knows what a hassle getting and maintaining a certificate is. Certbot and Let’s Encrypt can automate away the pain and let you turn on and manage HTTPS with simple commands. Using Certbot and Let's Encrypt is free.

### Getting Started
The best way to get started is to use our interactive guide <https://certbot.eff.org>. It generates instructions based on your configuration settings. In most cases, you’ll need root or administrator access <https://certbot.eff.org/faq/#does-certbot-require-root-administrator-privileges> to your web server to run Certbot.

Certbot is meant to be run directly on your web server on the command line, not on your personal computer. If you’re using a hosted service and don’t have direct access to your web server, you might not be able to use Certbot. Check with your hosting provider for documentation about uploading certificates or using certificates issued by Let’s Encrypt.

### Contributing
If you'd like to contribute to this project please read Developer Guide <https://certbot.eff.org/docs/contributing.html>.

This project is governed by EFF's Public Projects Code of Conduct <https://www.eff.org/pages/eppcode>.

### Links
Documentation: <https://certbot.eff.org/docs>

Software project: <https://github.com/certbot/certbot>

Changelog: <https://github.com/certbot/certbot/blob/main/certbot/CHANGELOG.md>

For Contributors: <https://certbot.eff.org/docs/contributing.html>

For Users: <https://certbot.eff.org/docs/using.html>

Main Website: <https://certbot.eff.org>

Let's Encrypt Website: <https://letsencrypt.org>

Community: <https://community.letsencrypt.org>

ACME spec: RFC 8555 <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8555>

ACME working area in github (archived): <https://github.com/ietf-wg-acme/acme>

## WHAT IS A CERTIFICATE?
A public key or digital certificate (formerly called an SSL certificate) uses a public key and a private key to enable secure communication between a client program (web browser, email client, etc.) and a server over an encrypted SSL (secure socket layer) or TLS (transport layer security) connection. The certificate is used both to encrypt the initial stage of communication (secure key exchange) and to identify the server. The certificate includes information about the key, information about the server identity, and the digital signature of the certificate issuer. If the issuer is trusted by the software that initiates the communication, and the signature is valid, then the key can be used to communicate securely with the server identified by the certificate. Using a certificate is a good way to prevent "man-in-the-middle" attacks, in which someone in between you and the server you think you are talking to is able to insert their own (harmful) content.

You can use Certbot to easily obtain and configure a free certificate from Let's Encrypt, a joint project of EFF, Mozilla, and many other sponsors.

### Certificates and Lineages
Certbot introduces the concept of a lineage, which is a collection of all the versions of a certificate plus Certbot configuration information maintained for that certificate from renewal to renewal. Whenever you renew a certificate, Certbot keeps the same configuration unless you explicitly change it, for example by adding or removing domains. If you add domains, you can either add them to an existing lineage or create a new one.

See also: Re-creating and Updating Existing Certificates <#updating-certs>

## GET CERTBOT

### Table of Contents

- System Requirements

- Installation

- Snap (Recommended)

- Alternative 1: Docker

- Alternative 2: Pip

- Alternative 3: Third Party Distributions

- Certbot-Auto [Deprecated]

### System Requirements

- Linux, macOS, BSD and Windows

- Recommended root access on Linux/BSD/Required Administrator access on Windows

- Port 80 Open

Note:

Certbot is most useful when run with root privileges, because it is then able to automatically configure TLS/SSL for Apache and nginx. Certbot is meant to be run directly on a web server, normally by a system administrator. In most cases, running Certbot on your personal computer is not a useful option. The instructions below relate to installing and running Certbot on a server.

### Installation
Unless you have very specific requirements, we kindly suggest that you use the installation instructions for your system found at <https://certbot.eff.org/instructions>.

### Snap (Recommended)
Our instructions are the same across all systems that use Snap. You can find instructions for installing Certbot through Snap can be found at <https://certbot.eff.org/instructions> by selecting your server software and then choosing "snapd" in the "System" dropdown menu.

Most modern Linux distributions (basically any that use systemd) can install Certbot packaged as a snap. Snaps are available for x86_64, ARMv7 and ARMv8 architectures. The Certbot snap provides an easy way to ensure you have the latest version of Certbot with features like automated certificate renewal preconfigured.

If you unable to use snaps, you can use an alternate method for installing certbot.

### Alternative 1: Docker
Docker <https://docker.com> is an amazingly simple and quick way to obtain a certificate. However, this mode of operation is unable to install certificates or configure your webserver, because our installer plugins cannot reach your webserver from inside the Docker container.

Most users should use the instructions at certbot.eff.org <https://certbot.eff.org/instructions>. You should only use Docker if you are sure you know what you are doing and have a good reason to do so.

You should definitely read the Where are my certificates? <#where-certs> section, in order to know how to manage the certificates manually. Our ciphersuites page <ciphers.html> provides some information about recommended ciphersuites. If none of these make much sense to you, you should definitely use the installation method recommended for your system at certbot.eff.org <https://certbot.eff.org/instructions>, which enables you to use installer plugins that cover both of those hard topics.

If you're still not convinced and have decided to use this method, from the server that the domain you're requesting a certificate for resolves to, install Docker <https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation/>, then issue a command like the one found below. If you are using Certbot with the Standalone <#standalone> plugin, you will need to make the port it uses accessible from outside of the container by including something like -p 80:80 or -p 443:443 on the command line before certbot/certbot.

```
sudo docker run -it --rm --name certbot \

            -v "/etc/letsencrypt:/etc/letsencrypt" \

            -v "/var/lib/letsencrypt:/var/lib/letsencrypt" \

            certbot/certbot certonly
```

Running Certbot with the certonly command will obtain a certificate and place it in the directory /etc/letsencrypt/live on your system. Because Certonly cannot install the certificate from within Docker, you must install the certificate manually according to the procedure recommended by the provider of your webserver.

There are also Docker images for each of Certbot's DNS plugins available at <https://hub.docker.com/u/certbot> which automate doing domain validation over DNS for popular providers. To use one, just replace certbot/certbot in the command above with the name of the image you want to use. For example, to use Certbot's plugin for Amazon Route 53, you'd use certbot/dns-route53. You may also need to add flags to Certbot and/or mount additional directories to provide access to your DNS API credentials as specified in the DNS plugin documentation <#dns-plugins>.

For more information about the layout of the /etc/letsencrypt directory, see Where are my certificates? <#where-certs>.

### Alternative 2: Pip
Installing Certbot through pip is only supported on a best effort basis and when using a virtual environment. Instructions for installing Certbot through pip can be found at <https://certbot.eff.org/instructions> by selecting your server software and then choosing "pip" in the "System" dropdown menu.

### Alternative 3: Third Party Distributions
Third party distributions exist for other specific needs. They often are maintained by these parties outside of Certbot and tend to rapidly fall out of date on LTS-style distributions.

### Certbot-Auto [Deprecated]
We used to have a shell script named certbot-auto to help people install Certbot on UNIX operating systems, however, this script is no longer supported.

Please remove certbot-auto. To do so, you need to do three things:

1.

If you added a cron job or systemd timer to automatically run certbot-auto to renew your certificates, you should delete it. If you did this by following our instructions, you can delete the entry added to /etc/crontab by running a command like sudo sed -i '/certbot-auto/d' /etc/crontab.

2.

Delete the certbot-auto script. If you placed it in /usr/local/bin` like we recommended, you can delete it by running sudo rm /usr/local/bin/certbot-auto.

3.

Delete the Certbot installation created by certbot-auto by running sudo rm -rf /opt/eff.org.

## USER GUIDE

### Table of Contents

- Certbot Commands

- Getting certificates (and choosing plugins)

- Apache

- Webroot

- Nginx

- Standalone

- DNS Plugins

- Manual

- Combining plugins

- Third-party plugins

•

Managing certificates

- Re-creating and Updating Existing Certificates

- Changing a Certificate's Domains

- RSA and ECDSA keys

•

Changing a certificate's key type

•

Revoking certificates

•

Revoking by account key or certificate private key

•

Deleting certificates

•

Safely deleting certificates

- Renewing certificates

- Renaming certificates

- Modifying the Renewal Configuration of Existing Certificates

- Certbot v2.3.0 and newer

- Certbot v2.2.0 and older

•

Automated Renewals

•

Setting up automated renewal

- Where are my certificates?

- Pre and Post Validation Hooks

- Changing the ACME Server

- Lock Files

- Configuration file

- Log Rotation

- Certbot command-line options

- Getting help

### Certbot Commands
Certbot uses a number of different commands (also referred to as "subcommands") to request specific actions such as obtaining, renewing, or revoking certificates. The most important and commonly-used commands will be discussed throughout this document; an exhaustive list also appears near the end of the document.

The certbot script on your web server might be named letsencrypt if your system uses an older package. Throughout the docs, whenever you see certbot, swap in the correct name as needed.

### Getting certificates (and choosing plugins)
Certbot helps you achieve two tasks:

1.

Obtaining a certificate: automatically performing the required authentication steps to prove that you control the domain(s), saving the certificate to /etc/letsencrypt/live/ and renewing it on a regular schedule.

2.

Optionally, installing that certificate to supported web servers (like Apache or nginx) and other kinds of servers. This is done by automatically modifying the configuration of your server in order to use the certificate.

To obtain a certificate and also install it, use the certbot run command (or certbot, which is the same).

To just obtain the certificate without installing it anywhere, the certbot certonly ("certificate only") command can be used.

Some example ways to use Certbot:

```
# Obtain and install a certificate:
certbot
# Obtain a certificate but don't install it:
certbot certonly
# You may specify multiple domains with -d and obtain and
# install different certificates by running Certbot multiple times:
certbot certonly -d example.com -d www.example.com
certbot certonly -d app.example.com -d api.example.com
```

To perform these tasks, Certbot will ask you to choose from a selection of authenticator and installer plugins. The appropriate choice of plugins will depend on what kind of server software you are running and plan to use your certificates with.

Authenticators are plugins which automatically perform the required steps to prove that you control the domain names you're trying to request a certificate for. An authenticator is always required to obtain a certificate.

Installers are plugins which can automatically modify your web server's configuration to serve your website over HTTPS, using the certificates obtained by Certbot. An installer is only required if you want Certbot to install the certificate to your web server.

Some plugins are both authenticators and installers and it is possible to specify a distinct combination of authenticator and plugin.

Plugin

Auth

Inst

Notes

Challenge types (and port)

apache

Y

Y

Automates obtaining and installing a certificate with Apache.

http-01 <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8555#section-8.3> (80)

nginx

Y

Y

Automates obtaining and installing a certificate with Nginx.

http-01 <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8555#section-8.3> (80)

webroot

Y

N

Obtains a certificate by writing to the webroot directory of an already running webserver.

http-01 <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8555#section-8.3> (80)

standalone

Y

N

Uses a "standalone" webserver to obtain a certificate. Requires port 80 to be available. This is useful on systems with no webserver, or when direct integration with the local webserver is not supported or not desired.

http-01 <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8555#section-8.3> (80)

DNS plugins

Y

N

This category of plugins automates obtaining a certificate by modifying DNS records to prove you have control over a domain. Doing domain validation in this way is the only way to obtain wildcard certificates from Let's Encrypt.

dns-01 <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8555#section-8.4> (53)

manual

Y

N

Obtain a certificate by manually following instructions to perform domain validation yourself. Certificates created this way do not support autorenewal. Autorenewal may be enabled by providing an authentication hook script to automate the domain validation steps.

http-01 <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8555#section-8.3> (80) or dns-01 <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8555#section-8.4> (53)

Under the hood, plugins use one of several ACME protocol challenges <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8555#section-8> to prove you control a domain. The options are http-01 <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8555#section-8.3> (which uses port 80) and dns-01 <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8555#section-8.4> (requiring configuration of a DNS server on port 53, though that's often not the same machine as your webserver). A few plugins support more than one challenge type, in which case you can choose one with --preferred-challenges.

There are also many third-party-plugins available. Below we describe in more detail the circumstances in which each plugin can be used, and how to use it.

### Apache
The Apache plugin currently supports <https://github.com/certbot/certbot/blob/main/certbot/src/certbot/_internal/plugins/apache/entrypoint.py> modern OSes based on Debian, Fedora, SUSE, Gentoo, CentOS and Darwin. This automates both obtaining and installing certificates on an Apache webserver. To specify this plugin on the command line, simply include --apache.

### Webroot
If you're running a local webserver for which you have the ability to modify the content being served, and you'd prefer not to stop the webserver during the certificate issuance process, you can use the webroot plugin to obtain a certificate by including certonly and --webroot on the command line. In addition, you'll need to specify --webroot-path or -w with the top-level directory ("web root") containing the files served by your webserver. For example, --webroot-path /var/www/html or --webroot-path /usr/share/nginx/html are two common webroot paths.

If you're getting a certificate for many domains at once, the plugin needs to know where each domain's files are served from, which could potentially be a separate directory for each domain. When requesting a certificate for multiple domains, each domain will use the most recently specified --webroot-path. So, for instance,

```
certbot certonly --webroot -w /var/www/example -d www.example.com -d example.com -w /var/www/other -d other.example.net -d another.other.example.net
```

would obtain a single certificate for all of those names, using the /var/www/example webroot directory for the first two, and /var/www/other for the second two.

The webroot plugin works by creating a temporary file for each of your requested domains in ${webroot-path}/.well-known/acme-challenge. Then the Let's Encrypt validation server makes HTTP requests to validate that the DNS for each requested domain resolves to the server running certbot. An example request made to your web server would look like:

```
66.133.109.36 - - [05/Jan/2016:20:11:24 -0500] "GET /.well-known/acme-challenge/HGr8U1IeTW4kY_Z6UIyaakzOkyQgPr_7ArlLgtZE8SX HTTP/1.1" 200 87 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Let's Encrypt validation server; +https://www.letsencrypt.org)"
```

Note that to use the webroot plugin, your server must be configured to serve files from hidden directories. If /.well-known is treated specially by your webserver configuration, you might need to modify the configuration to ensure that files inside /.well-known/acme-challenge are served by the webserver.

Under Windows, Certbot will generate a web.config file, if one does not already exist, in /.well-known/acme-challenge in order to let IIS serve the challenge files even if they do not have an extension.

### Nginx
The Nginx plugin should work for most configurations. We recommend backing up Nginx configurations before using it (though you can also revert changes to configurations with certbot --nginx rollback). You can use it by providing the --nginx flag on the commandline.

```
certbot --nginx
```

### Standalone
Use standalone mode to obtain a certificate if you don't want to use (or don't currently have) existing server software. The standalone plugin does not rely on any other server software running on the machine where you obtain the certificate.

To obtain a certificate using a "standalone" webserver, you can use the standalone plugin by including certonly and --standalone on the command line. This plugin needs to bind to port 80 in order to perform domain validation, so you may need to stop your existing webserver.

It must still be possible for your machine to accept inbound connections from the Internet on the specified port using each requested domain name.

By default, Certbot first attempts to bind to the port for all interfaces using IPv6 and then bind to that port using IPv4; Certbot continues so long as at least one bind succeeds. On most Linux systems, IPv4 traffic will be routed to the bound IPv6 port and the failure during the second bind is expected.

Use --<challenge-type>-address to explicitly tell Certbot which interface (and protocol) to bind.

### DNS Plugins
If you'd like to obtain a wildcard certificate from Let's Encrypt or run certbot on a machine other than your target webserver, you can use one of Certbot's DNS plugins.

These plugins are not included in a default Certbot installation and must be installed separately. They are available in many OS package managers, as Docker images, and as snaps. Visit <https://certbot.eff.org> to learn the best way to use the DNS plugins on your system.

Once installed, you can find documentation on how to use each plugin at:

- certbot-dns-cloudflare <https://certbot-dns-cloudflare.readthedocs.io>

- certbot-dns-digitalocean <https://certbot-dns-digitalocean.readthedocs.io>

- certbot-dns-dnsimple <https://certbot-dns-dnsimple.readthedocs.io>

- certbot-dns-dnsmadeeasy <https://certbot-dns-dnsmadeeasy.readthedocs.io>

- certbot-dns-gehirn <https://certbot-dns-gehirn.readthedocs.io>

- certbot-dns-google <https://certbot-dns-google.readthedocs.io>

- certbot-dns-linode <https://certbot-dns-linode.readthedocs.io>

- certbot-dns-luadns <https://certbot-dns-luadns.readthedocs.io>

- certbot-dns-nsone <https://certbot-dns-nsone.readthedocs.io>

- certbot-dns-ovh <https://certbot-dns-ovh.readthedocs.io>

- certbot-dns-rfc2136 <https://certbot-dns-rfc2136.readthedocs.io>

- certbot-dns-route53 <https://certbot-dns-route53.readthedocs.io>

- certbot-dns-sakuracloud <https://certbot-dns-sakuracloud.readthedocs.io>

### Manual
If you'd like to obtain a certificate running certbot on a machine other than your target webserver or perform the steps for domain validation yourself, you can use the manual plugin. While hidden from the UI, you can use the plugin to obtain a certificate by specifying certonly and --manual on the command line. This requires you to copy and paste commands into another terminal session, which may be on a different computer.

The manual plugin can use either the http or the dns challenge. You can use the --preferred-challenges option to choose the challenge of your preference.

The http challenge will ask you to place a file with a specific name and specific content in the /.well-known/acme-challenge/ directory directly in the top-level directory (“web root”) containing the files served by your webserver. In essence it's the same as the webroot plugin, but not automated.

When using the dns challenge, certbot will ask you to place a TXT DNS record with specific contents under the domain name consisting of the hostname for which you want a certificate issued, prepended by _acme-challenge.

For example, for the domain example.com, a zone file entry would look like:

```
_acme-challenge.example.com. 300 IN TXT "gfj9Xq...Rg85nM"
```

Renewal with the manual plugin

Certificates created using --manual do not support automatic renewal unless combined with an authentication hook script <#hooks> via --manual-auth-hook to automatically set up the required HTTP and/or TXT challenges.

If you can use one of the other plugins which support autorenewal to create your certificate, doing so is highly recommended.

To manually renew a certificate using --manual without hooks, repeat the same certbot --manual command you used to create the certificate originally. As this will require you to copy and paste new HTTP files or DNS TXT records, the command cannot be automated with a cron job.

### Combining plugins
Sometimes you may want to specify a combination of distinct authenticator and installer plugins. To do so, specify the authenticator plugin with --authenticator or -a and the installer plugin with --installer or -i.

For instance, you could create a certificate using the webroot plugin for authentication and the apache plugin for installation.

```
certbot run -a webroot -i apache -w /var/www/html -d example.com
```

Or you could create a certificate using the manual plugin for authentication and the nginx plugin for installation. (Note that this certificate cannot be renewed automatically.)

```
certbot run -a manual -i nginx -d example.com
```

### Third-party plugins
There are also a number of third-party plugins for the client, provided by other developers. Many are beta/experimental, but some are already in widespread use:

Plugin

Auth

Inst

Notes

haproxy <https://github.com/greenhost/certbot-haproxy>

Y

Y

Integration with the HAProxy load balancer

s3front <https://github.com/dlapiduz/letsencrypt-s3front>

Y

Y

Integration with Amazon CloudFront distribution of S3 buckets

gandi <https://github.com/obynio/certbot-plugin-gandi>

Y

N

Obtain certificates via the Gandi LiveDNS API

varnish <https://git.sesse.net/?p=letsencrypt-varnish-plugin>

Y

N

Obtain certificates via a Varnish server

external-auth <https://github.com/EnigmaBridge/certbot-external-auth>

Y

Y

A plugin for convenient scripting

pritunl <https://github.com/kharkevich/letsencrypt-pritunl>

N

Y

Install certificates in pritunl distributed OpenVPN servers

proxmox <https://github.com/kharkevich/letsencrypt-proxmox>

N

Y

Install certificates in Proxmox Virtualization servers

dns-standalone <https://github.com/siilike/certbot-dns-standalone>

Y

N

Obtain certificates via an integrated DNS server

dns-ispconfig <https://github.com/m42e/certbot-dns-ispconfig>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using ISPConfig as DNS server

dns-cloudns <https://github.com/inventage/certbot-dns-cloudns>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using ClouDNS API

dns-clouddns <https://github.com/vshosting/certbot-dns-clouddns>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using CloudDNS API

dns-lightsail <https://github.com/noi/certbot-dns-lightsail>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using Amazon Lightsail DNS API

dns-inwx <https://github.com/oGGy990/certbot-dns-inwx/>

Y

Y

DNS Authentication for INWX through the XML API

dns-azure <https://github.com/terricain/certbot-dns-azure>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using Azure DNS

dns-godaddy <https://github.com/miigotu/certbot-dns-godaddy>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using Godaddy DNS

dns-yandexcloud <https://github.com/PykupeJIbc/certbot-dns-yandexcloud>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using Yandex Cloud DNS

dns-bunny <https://github.com/mwt/certbot-dns-bunny>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using BunnyDNS

njalla <https://github.com/chaptergy/certbot-dns-njalla>

Y

N

DNS Authentication for njalla

DuckDNS <https://github.com/infinityofspace/certbot_dns_duckdns>

Y

N

DNS Authentication for DuckDNS

Porkbun <https://github.com/infinityofspace/certbot_dns_porkbun>

Y

N

DNS Authentication for Porkbun

Infomaniak <https://github.com/Infomaniak/certbot-dns-infomaniak>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using Infomaniak Domains API

dns-multi <https://github.com/alexzorin/certbot-dns-multi>

Y

N

DNS authentication of 100+ providers using go-acme/lego

dns-dnsmanager <https://github.com/stayallive/certbot-dns-dnsmanager>

Y

N

DNS Authentication for dnsmanager.io

standalone-nfq <https://github.com/alexzorin/certbot-standalone-nfq>

Y

N

HTTP Authentication that works with any webserver (Linux only)

dns-solidserver <https://gitlab.com/charlyhong/certbot-dns-solidserver>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using SOLIDserver (EfficientIP)

dns-stackit <https://github.com/stackitcloud/certbot-dns-stackit>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using STACKIT DNS

dns-ionos <https://github.com/ionos-cloud/certbot-dns-ionos-cloud>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using IONOS Cloud DNS

dns-mijn-host <https://github.com/mijnhost/certbot-dns-mijn-host>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using mijn.host DNS

nginx-unit <https://github.com/kea/certbot-nginx-unit>

Y

Y

Automates obtaining and installing a certificate with Nginx Unit

dns-cdmon <https://github.com/rascazzione/certbot-dns-cdmon>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using cdmon's API

dns-synergy-wholesale <https://github.com/ALameLlama/certbot-dns-synergy-wholesale>

Y

N

DNS Authentication using Synergy Wholesale DNS

pkcs12 <https://github.com/nasa-gcn/certbot-pkcs12>

N

Y

Install certificates as PKCS#12 archives

dns-hetzner-cloud <https://github.com/rolschewsky/certbot-dns-hetzner-cloud>

Y

N

DNS Authentication for Hetzner Cloud DNS

dns-czechia <https://github.com/CZECHIA-COM/certbot-dns-czechia>

Y

N

DNS Authentication for czechia.com

dns-eurodns <https://pypi.org/project/certbot-dns-eurodns/>

Y

N

DNS Authentication for EuroDNS

If you're interested, you can also write your own plugin <#dev-plugin>.

### Managing certificates
To view a list of the certificates Certbot knows about, run the certificates subcommand:

certbot certificates

This returns information in the following format:

```
Found the following certificates:

  Certificate Name: example.com

    Domains: example.com, www.example.com

    Expiry Date: 2017-02-19 19:53:00+00:00 (VALID: 30 days)

    Certificate Path: /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem

    Key Type: RSA

    Private Key Path: /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem
```

Certificate Name shows the name of the certificate. Pass this name using the --cert-name flag to specify a particular certificate for the run, certonly, certificates, renew, and delete commands. The certificate name cannot contain filepath separators (i.e. '/' or '\', depending on the platform). Example:

```
certbot certonly --cert-name example.com
```

### Re-creating and Updating Existing Certificates
You can use certonly or run subcommands to request the creation of a single new certificate even if you already have an existing certificate with some of the same domain names.

If a certificate is requested with run or certonly specifying a certificate name that already exists, Certbot updates the existing certificate. Otherwise a new certificate is created and assigned the specified name.

The --force-renewal, --duplicate, and --expand options control Certbot's behavior when re-creating a certificate with the same name as an existing certificate. If you don't specify a requested behavior, Certbot may ask you what you intended.

--force-renewal tells Certbot to request a new certificate with the same domains as an existing certificate. Each domain must be explicitly specified via -d. If successful, this certificate is saved alongside the earlier one and symbolic links (the "live" reference) will be updated to point to the new certificate. This is a valid method of renewing a specific individual certificate.

--duplicate tells Certbot to create a separate, unrelated certificate with the same domains as an existing certificate. This certificate is saved completely separately from the prior one. Most users will not need to issue this command in normal circumstances.

--expand tells Certbot to update an existing certificate with a new certificate that contains all of the old domains and one or more additional new domains. With the --expand option, use the -d option to specify all existing domains and one or more new domains.

Example:

```
certbot --expand -d existing.com,example.com,newdomain.com
```

If you prefer, you can specify the domains individually like this:

```
certbot --expand -d existing.com -d example.com -d newdomain.com
```

Consider using --cert-name instead of --expand, as it gives more control over which certificate is modified and it lets you remove domains as well as adding them.

--allow-subset-of-names tells Certbot to continue with certificate generation if only some of the specified domain authorizations can be obtained. This may be useful if some domains specified in a certificate no longer point at this system.

Whenever you obtain a new certificate in any of these ways, the new certificate exists alongside any previously obtained certificates, whether or not the previous certificates have expired. The generation of a new certificate counts against several rate limits that are intended to prevent abuse of the ACME protocol, as described here <https://letsencrypt.org/docs/rate-limits/>.

### Changing a Certificate's Domains
The --cert-name flag can also be used to modify the domains a certificate contains, by specifying new domains using the -d or --domains flag. If certificate example.com previously contained example.com and www.example.com, it can be modified to only contain example.com by specifying only example.com with the -d or --domains flag. Example:

```
certbot certonly --cert-name example.com -d example.com
```

The same format can be used to expand the set of domains a certificate contains, or to replace that set entirely:

```
certbot certonly --cert-name example.com -d example.org,www.example.org
```

### RSA and ECDSA keys
Certbot supports two certificate private key algorithms: rsa and ecdsa.

As of version 2.0.0, Certbot defaults to ECDSA secp256r1 (P-256) certificate private keys for all new certificates. Existing certificates will continue to renew using their existing key type, unless a key type change is requested.

The type of key used by Certbot can be controlled through the --key-type option. You can use the --elliptic-curve option to control the curve used in ECDSA certificates and the --rsa-key-size option to control the size of RSA keys.

Warning:

If you obtain certificates using ECDSA keys, you should be careful not to downgrade to a Certbot version earlier than 1.10.0 where ECDSA keys were not supported. Downgrades like this are possible if you switch from something like the snaps or pip to packages provided by your operating system which often lag behind.

### Changing a certificate's key type
Unless you are aware that you need to support very old HTTPS clients that are not supported by most sites, you can safely transition your site to use ECDSA keys instead of RSA keys.

If you want to change a single certificate to use ECDSA keys, you'll need to create or renew a certificate while setting --key-type ecdsa on the command line:

```
certbot renew --key-type ecdsa --cert-name example.com --force-renewal
```

If you want to use ECDSA keys for all certificates in the future (including renewals of existing certificates), you can add the following line to Certbot's configuration file:

```
key-type = ecdsa
```

which will take effect upon the next renewal of each certificate.

### Revoking certificates
If you need to revoke a certificate, use the revoke subcommand to do so.

A certificate may be revoked by providing its name (see certbot certificates) or by providing its path directly:

```
certbot revoke --cert-name example.com
certbot revoke --cert-path /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/cert.pem
```

If the certificate being revoked was obtained via the --staging, --test-cert or a non-default --server flag, that flag must be passed to the revoke subcommand.

Note:

After revocation, Certbot will (by default) ask whether you want to delete the certificate. Unless deleted, Certbot will try to renew revoked certificates the next time certbot renew runs.

You can also specify the reason for revoking your certificate by using the reason flag. Reasons include unspecified which is the default, as well as keycompromise, affiliationchanged, superseded, and cessationofoperation:

```
certbot revoke --cert-name example.com --reason keycompromise
```

### Revoking by account key or certificate private key
By default, Certbot will try revoke the certificate using your ACME account key. If the certificate was created from the same ACME account, the revocation will be successful.

If you instead have the corresponding private key file to the certificate you wish to revoke, use --key-path to perform the revocation from any ACME account:

```
certbot revoke --cert-path /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/cert.pem --key-path /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem
```

### Deleting certificates
If you need to delete a certificate, use the delete subcommand.

Note:

Read this and the Safely deleting certificates sections carefully. This is an irreversible operation and must be done with care.

Certbot does not automatically revoke a certificate before deleting it. If you're no longer using a certificate and don't plan to use it anywhere else, you may want to follow the instructions in Revoking certificates instead. Generally, there's no need to revoke a certificate if its private key has not been compromised, but you may still receive expiration emails from Let's Encrypt unless you revoke.

Note:

Do not manually delete certificate files from inside /etc/letsencrypt/. Always use the delete subcommand.

A certificate may be deleted by providing its name with --cert-name. You may find its name using certbot certificates.

Otherwise, you will be prompted to choose one or more certificates to delete:

```
certbot delete --cert-name example.com
# or to choose from a list:
certbot delete
```

### Safely deleting certificates
Deleting a certificate without following the proper steps can result in a non-functioning server. To safely delete a certificate, follow all the steps below to make sure that references to a certificate are removed from the configuration of any installed server software (Apache, nginx, Postfix, etc) before deleting the certificate.

To explain further, when installing a certificate, Certbot modifies Apache or nginx's configuration to load the certificate and its private key from the /etc/letsencrypt/live/ directory. Before deleting a certificate, it is necessary to undo that modification, by removing any references to the certificate from the webserver's configuration files.

Follow these steps to safely delete a certificate:

1.

Find all references to the certificate (substitute example.com in the command for the name of the certificate you wish to delete):

```
sudo bash -c 'grep -R live/example.com /etc/{nginx,httpd,apache2}'
```

If there are no references found, skip directly to Step 4.

If some references are found, they will look something like:

```
/etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf:SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem
/etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf:SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem
```

2.

You will need a self-signed certificate to replace the certificate you are deleting. The following command will generate one for you, saving the certificate at /etc/letsencrypt/self-signed-cert.pem and its private key at /etc/letsencrypt/self-signed-privkey.pem:

```
sudo openssl req -nodes -batch -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/letsencrypt/self-signed-privkey.pem -out /etc/letsencrypt/self-signed-cert.pem -days 356
```

3.

For each reference found in Step 1, open the file in a text editor and replace the reference to the existing certificate with a reference to the self-signed certificate. Continuing from the previous example, you would open /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf in a text editor and modify the two matching lines of text to instead say:

```
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/self-signed-cert.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/self-signed-privkey.pem
```

4.

It is now safe to delete the certificate. Do so by running:

```
sudo certbot delete --cert-name example.com
```

### Renewing certificates
See also:

Most Certbot installations come with automatic renewal out of the box. See Automated Renewals for more details.

See also:

Users of the Manual plugin should note that --manual certificates will not renew automatically, unless combined with authentication hook scripts. See Renewal with the manual plugin <#manual-renewal>.

Certbot supports a renew action to check all installed certificates for impending expiry and attempt to renew them. The simplest form is simply

certbot renew

This command attempts to renew any previously-obtained certificates which are ready for renewal. As of Certbot 4.0.0, a certificate is considered ready for renewal when less than 1/3rd of its lifetime remains. For certificates with a lifetime of 10 days or less, that threshold is 1/2 of the lifetime. Prior to Certbot 4.0.0 the threshold was a fixed 30 days.

The same plugin and options that were used at the time the certificate was originally issued will be used for the renewal attempt, unless you specify other plugins or options. Unlike certonly, renew acts on multiple certificates and always takes into account whether each one is near expiry. Because of this, renew is suitable (and designed) for automated use, to allow your system to automatically renew each certificate when appropriate. Since renew only renews certificates that are near expiry it can be run as frequently as you want - since it will usually take no action.

The renew command includes hooks for running commands or scripts before or after a certificate is renewed. For example, if you have a single certificate obtained using the standalone plugin, you might need to stop the webserver before renewing so standalone can bind to the necessary ports, and then restart it after the plugin is finished. Example:

```
certbot renew --pre-hook "service nginx stop" --post-hook "service nginx start"
```

If a hook exits with a non-zero exit code, the error will be printed to stderr but renewal will be attempted anyway. A failing hook doesn't directly cause Certbot to exit with a non-zero exit code, but since Certbot exits with a non-zero exit code when renewals fail, a failed hook causing renewal failures will indirectly result in a non-zero exit code. Hooks will only be run if a certificate is due for renewal, so you can run the above command frequently without unnecessarily stopping your webserver.

When Certbot detects that a certificate is due for renewal, --pre-hook and --post-hook hooks run before and after each attempt to renew it. If you want your hook to run only after a successful renewal, use --deploy-hook in a command like this.

certbot renew --deploy-hook /path/to/deploy-hook-script

You can also specify hooks by placing files in subdirectories of Certbot's configuration directory. Assuming your configuration directory is /etc/letsencrypt, any executable files found in /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/pre, /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/deploy, and /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/post will be run as pre, deploy, and post hooks respectively. These hooks are run in alphabetical order. (The order the hooks are run is determined by the byte value of the characters in their filenames and is not dependent on your locale.)

Prior to certbot 3.2.0, hooks in directories were only run when certificates were renewed with the renew subcommand, but as of 3.2.0, they are run for any subcommand.

Hooks specified in the command line, configuration file, or renewal configuration files are run as usual after running all hooks in these directories. One minor exception to this is if a hook specified elsewhere is simply the path to an executable file in the hook directory of the same type (e.g. your pre-hook is the path to an executable in /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/pre), the file is not run a second time. You can stop Certbot from automatically running executables found in these directories by including --no-directory-hooks on the command line.

More information about hooks can be found by running certbot --help renew.

If you're sure that this command executes successfully without human intervention, you can add the command to crontab (since certificates are only renewed when they're determined to be near expiry, the command can run on a regular basis, like every week or every day). In that case, you are likely to want to use the -q or --quiet quiet flag to silence all output except errors.

If you are manually renewing all of your certificates, the --force-renewal flag may be helpful; it causes the expiration time of the certificate(s) to be ignored when considering renewal, and attempts to renew each and every installed certificate regardless of its age. (This form is not appropriate to run daily because each certificate will be renewed every day, which will quickly run into the certificate authority rate limit.)

Starting with Certbot 2.7.0, certbot provides the environment variables RENEWED_DOMAINS and FAILED_DOMAINS to all post renewal hooks. These variables contain a space separated list of domains. These variables can be used to determine if a renewal has succeeded or failed as part of your post renewal hook.

Note that options provided to certbot renew will apply to every certificate for which renewal is attempted; for example, certbot renew --rsa-key-size 4096 would try to replace every near-expiry certificate with an equivalent certificate using a 4096-bit RSA public key. If a certificate is successfully renewed using specified options, those options will be saved and used for future renewals of that certificate.

An alternative form that provides for more fine-grained control over the renewal process (while renewing specified certificates one at a time), is certbot certonly with the complete set of subject domains of a specific certificate specified via -d flags. You may also want to include the -n or --noninteractive flag to prevent blocking on user input (which is useful when running the command from cron).

certbot certonly -n -d example.com -d www.example.com

All of the domains covered by the certificate must be specified in this case in order to renew and replace the old certificate rather than obtaining a new one; don't forget any www. domains! Specifying a subset of the domains creates a new, separate certificate containing only those domains, rather than replacing the original certificate. When run with a set of domains corresponding to an existing certificate, the certonly command attempts to renew that specific certificate.

Please note that the CA will send notification emails to the address you provide if you do not renew certificates that are about to expire.

Certbot is working hard to improve the renewal process, and we apologize for any inconvenience you encounter in integrating these commands into your individual environment.

Note:

certbot renew exit status will only be 1 if a renewal attempt failed. This means certbot renew exit status will be 0 if no certificate needs to be updated. If you write a custom script and expect to run a command only after a certificate was actually renewed you will need to use the --deploy-hook since the exit status will be 0 both on successful renewal and when renewal is not necessary.

### Renaming certificates
While certbot does not have an internal rename function, it is possible to rename certs by requesting a new certificate using certbot's --cert-name flag.

1.

View certificates with certbot certificates The output might be something like:

```
Found the following certs:

  Certificate Name: yourdomain.com-0001

    Serial Number: 2ce74f4e2b822211dd7648ea26c8927bdef6

    Key Type: ECDSA

    Domains: yourdomain.com subdomain.yourdomain.com

    Expiry Date: 2025-11-16 20:27:27+00:00 (INVALID: TEST_CERT)

    Certificate Path: /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com-0001/fullchain.pem

    Private Key Path: /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com-0001/privkey.pem

  Certificate Name: yourdomain.com

    Serial Number: 2c72aa8cf58aa9fe9a33208d82304642d9ed

    Key Type: ECDSA

    Domains: yourdomain.com

    Expiry Date: 2025-11-16 19:22:47+00:00 (INVALID: TEST_CERT)

    Certificate Path: /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/fullchain.pem

    Private Key Path: /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/privkey.pem
```

In this example, we will rename certificate yourdomain.com-0001 to yourdomain.com.

2.

If the name you want is in use and you're not using that cert, delete it using the instructions in the Deleting certificates section. You'll then have:

```
Found the following certs:

  Certificate Name: yourdomain.com-0001

    Serial Number: 2ce74f4e2b822211dd7648ea26c8927bdef6

    Key Type: ECDSA

    Domains: yourdomain.com subdomain.yourdomain.com

    Expiry Date: 2025-11-16 20:27:27+00:00 (INVALID: TEST_CERT)

    Certificate Path: /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com-0001/fullchain.pem

    Private Key Path: /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com-0001/privkey.pem
```

3.

If you're not sure how you set the cert up initially, note relevant configuration options by inspecting /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/yourdomain.com-0001.conf It will look something like:

```
version = 4.2.0
archive_dir = /etc/letsencrypt/archive/yourdomain.com-0001
cert = /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com-0001/cert.pem
privkey = /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com-0001/privkey.pem
chain = /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com-0001/chain.pem
fullchain = /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com-0001/fullchain.pem
[renewalparams]
account = abcdef12345678910
server = https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
authenticator = standalone
key_type = ecdsa
post_hook = "echo 'shut down server'"
```

You'll want to note the authenticator, installer, server, any hooks, etc.

4.

Create a new cert with the options and name you want by running certbot certonly --cert-name yourdomain.com -d yourdomain.com -d otherdomain.com --any-other-options. The value for --cert-name can be anything you want; by default it is the first domain listed on the cert.

5.

Make sure that any links to your certificates are updated. If you're using certbot to manage the installation of certs on your webserver, you can run certbot install --cert-name yourdomain.com.

6.

Restart your webserver, if applicable.

7.

You can now delete the old certificate, again using the Deleting certificates section.

### Modifying the Renewal Configuration of Existing Certificates
When creating a certificate, Certbot will keep track of all of the relevant options chosen by the user. At renewal time, Certbot will remember these options and apply them once again.

Sometimes, you may encounter the need to change some of these options for future certificate renewals. To achieve this, you will need to perform the following steps:

### Certbot v2.3.0 and newer
The certbot reconfigure command can be used to change a certificate's renewal options. This command will use the new renewal options to perform a test renewal against the Let's Encrypt staging server. If this is successful, the new renewal options will be saved and will apply to future renewals.

You will need to specify the --cert-name, which can be found by running certbot certificates.

A list of common options that may be updated with the reconfigure command can be found by running certbot help reconfigure.

As a practical example, if you were using the webroot authenticator and had relocated your website to another directory, you can change the --webroot-path to the new directory using the following command:

```
certbot reconfigure --cert-name example.com --webroot-path /path/to/new/location
```

### Certbot v2.2.0 and older
1.

Perform a dry run renewal with the amended options on the command line. This allows you to confirm that the change is valid and will result in successful future renewals.

2.

If the dry run is successful, perform a live renewal of the certificate. This will persist the change for future renewals. If the certificate is not yet due to expire, you will need to force a renewal using --force-renewal.

Note:

Rate limits from the certificate authority may prevent you from performing multiple renewals in a short period of time. It is strongly recommended to perform the second step only once, when you have decided on what options should change.

As a practical example, if you were using the webroot authenticator and had relocated your website to another directory, you would need to change the --webroot-path to the new directory. Following the above advice:

1.

Perform a dry-run renewal of the individual certificate with the amended options:

```
certbot renew --cert-name example.com --webroot-path /path/to/new/location --dry-run
```

2.

If the dry-run was successful, make the change permanent by performing a live renewal of the certificate with the amended options, including --force-renewal:

```
certbot renew --cert-name example.com --webroot-path /path/to/new/location --force-renewal
```

--cert-name selects the particular certificate to be modified. Without this option, all certificates will be selected.

--webroot-path is the option intended to be changed. All other previously selected options will be kept the same and do not need to be included in the command.

For advanced certificate management tasks, it is also possible to manually modify the certificate's renewal configuration file, but this is discouraged since it can easily break Certbot's ability to renew your certificates. These renewal configuration files are located at /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/CERTNAME.conf. If you choose to modify the renewal configuration file we advise you to make a backup of the file beforehand and test its validity with the certbot renew --dry-run command.

Warning:

Manually modifying files under /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/ can damage them if done improperly and we do not recommend doing so.

### Automated Renewals
Most Certbot installations come with automatic renewals preconfigured. This is done by means of a scheduled task which runs certbot renew periodically.

If you are unsure whether you need to configure automated renewal:

1.

Review the instructions for your system and installation method at <https://certbot.eff.org/instructions>. They will describe how to set up a scheduled task, if necessary. If no step is listed, your system comes with automated renewal pre-installed, and you should not need to take any additional actions.

2.

On Linux and BSD, you can check to see if your installation method has pre-installed a timer for you. To do so, look for the certbot renew command in either your system's crontab (typically /etc/crontab or /etc/cron.*/*) or systemd timers (systemctl list-timers).

3.

If you're still not sure, you can configure automated renewal manually by following the steps in the next section. Certbot has been carefully engineered to handle the case where both manual automated renewal and pre-installed automated renewal are set up.

### Setting up automated renewal
If you think you may need to set up automated renewal, follow these instructions to set up a scheduled task to automatically renew your certificates in the background. If you are unsure whether your system has a pre-installed scheduled task for Certbot, it is safe to follow these instructions to create one.

Note:

If you're using Windows, these instructions are not necessary as Certbot on Windows comes with a scheduled task for automated renewal pre-installed. If you are using macOS and installed Certbot using Homebrew, follow the instructions at <https://certbot.eff.org/instructions> to set up automated renewal. The instructions below are not applicable on macOS.

Run the following line, which will add a cron job to /etc/crontab:

```
SLEEPTIME=$(awk 'BEGIN{srand(); print int(rand()*(3600+1))}'); echo "0 0,12 * * * root sleep $SLEEPTIME && certbot renew -q" | sudo tee -a /etc/crontab > /dev/null
```

If you needed to stop your webserver to run Certbot, you'll want to add pre and post hooks to stop and start your webserver automatically. For example, if your webserver is HAProxy, run the following commands to create the hook files in the appropriate directory:

```
sudo sh -c 'printf "#!/bin/sh\nservice haproxy stop\n" > /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/pre/haproxy.sh'
sudo sh -c 'printf "#!/bin/sh\nservice haproxy start\n" > /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/post/haproxy.sh'
sudo chmod 755 /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/pre/haproxy.sh
sudo chmod 755 /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/post/haproxy.sh
```

Congratulations, Certbot will now automatically renew your certificates in the background.

If you are interested in learning more about how Certbot renews your certificates, see the Renewing certificates section above.

### Where are my certificates?
All generated keys and issued certificates can be found in /etc/letsencrypt/live/$domain, where $domain is the certificate name (see the note below). Rather than copying, please point your (web) server configuration directly to those files (or create symlinks). During the renewal, /etc/letsencrypt/live is updated with the latest necessary files.

Note:

The certificate name $domain used in the path /etc/letsencrypt/live/$domain follows this convention:

- it is the name given to --cert-name,

- if --cert-name is not set by the user it is the first domain given to --domains,

- if the first domain is a wildcard domain (eg. *.example.com) the certificate name will be example.com,

- if a name collision would occur with a certificate already named example.com, the new certificate name will be constructed using a numerical sequence as example.com-001.

For historical reasons, the containing directories are created with permissions of 0700 meaning that certificates are accessible only to servers that run as the root user. If you will never downgrade to an older version of Certbot, then you can safely fix this using chmod 0755 /etc/letsencrypt/{live,archive}.

For servers that drop root privileges before attempting to read the private key file, you will also need to use chgrp and chmod 0640 to allow the server to read /etc/letsencrypt/live/$domain/privkey.pem.

The following files are available:

privkey.pem

Private key for the certificate. Warning:

This must be kept secret at all times! Never share it with anyone, including Certbot developers. You cannot put it into a safe, however - your server still needs to access this file in order for SSL/TLS to work.

Note:

As of Certbot version 0.29.0, private keys for new certificate default to 0600. Any changes to the group mode or group owner (gid) of this file will be preserved on renewals.

This is what Apache needs for SSLCertificateKeyFile <https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_ssl.html#sslcertificatekeyfile>, and Nginx for ssl_certificate_key <https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_ssl_module.html#ssl_certificate_key>.

fullchain.pem

All certificates, including server certificate (aka leaf certificate or end-entity certificate). The server certificate is the first one in this file, followed by any intermediates. This is what Apache >= 2.4.8 needs for SSLCertificateFile <https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_ssl.html#sslcertificatefile>, and what Nginx needs for ssl_certificate <https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_ssl_module.html#ssl_certificate>.

cert.pem and chain.pem (less common)

cert.pem contains the server certificate by itself, and chain.pem contains the additional intermediate certificate or certificates that web browsers will need in order to validate the server certificate. If you provide one of these files to your web server, you must provide both of them, or some browsers will show "This Connection is Untrusted" errors for your site, some of the time <https://whatsmychaincert.com/>. Apache < 2.4.8 needs these for SSLCertificateFile <https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_ssl.html#sslcertificatefile>. and SSLCertificateChainFile <https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_ssl.html#sslcertificatechainfile>, respectively.

If you're using OCSP stapling with Nginx >= 1.3.7, chain.pem should be provided as the ssl_trusted_certificate <https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_ssl_module.html#ssl_trusted_certificate> to validate OCSP responses.

Note:

All files are PEM-encoded. If you need other format, such as DER or PFX, then you could convert using openssl. You can automate that with --deploy-hook if you're using automatic renewal.

### Pre and Post Validation Hooks
Certbot allows for the specification of pre and post validation hooks when run in manual mode. The flags to specify these scripts are --manual-auth-hook and --manual-cleanup-hook respectively and can be used as follows:

```
certbot certonly --manual --manual-auth-hook /path/to/http/authenticator.sh --manual-cleanup-hook /path/to/http/cleanup.sh -d secure.example.com
```

This will run the authenticator.sh script, attempt the validation, and then run the cleanup.sh script. Additionally certbot will pass relevant environment variables to these scripts:

- CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER: The domain or IP address being authenticated

- CERTBOT_VALIDATION: The validation string

- CERTBOT_TOKEN: Resource name part of the HTTP-01 challenge (HTTP-01 only)

- CERTBOT_REMAINING_CHALLENGES: Number of challenges remaining after the current challenge

- CERTBOT_ALL_IDENTIFIERS: A comma-separated list of all identifiers challenged for the current certificate

Additionally for cleanup:

•

CERTBOT_AUTH_OUTPUT: Whatever the auth script wrote to stdout

Certbot also sets CERTBOT_DOMAIN and CERTBOT_ALL_DOMAINS to the same values as CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER and CERTBOT_ALL_IDENTIFIERS respectively for backwards compatibility, however, the variables names containing "identifier" are preferred since Certbot has added support for obtaining certificates for IP addresses.

Example usage for HTTP-01:

```
certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges=http --manual-auth-hook /path/to/http/authenticator.sh --manual-cleanup-hook /path/to/http/cleanup.sh -d secure.example.com
```

/path/to/http/authenticator.sh

```
#!/bin/bash
echo $CERTBOT_VALIDATION > /var/www/htdocs/.well-known/acme-challenge/$CERTBOT_TOKEN
```

/path/to/http/cleanup.sh

```
#!/bin/bash
rm -f /var/www/htdocs/.well-known/acme-challenge/$CERTBOT_TOKEN
```

Example usage for DNS-01 (Cloudflare API v4) (for example purposes only, do not use as-is)

```
certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges=dns --manual-auth-hook /path/to/dns/authenticator.sh --manual-cleanup-hook /path/to/dns/cleanup.sh -d secure.example.com
```

/path/to/dns/authenticator.sh

```
#!/bin/bash
# Get your API key from https://www.cloudflare.com/a/account/my-account
API_KEY="your-api-key"
EMAIL="your.email@example.com"
# Strip only the top domain to get the zone id
DOMAIN=$(expr match "$CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER" '.*\.\(.*\..*\)')
# Get the Cloudflare zone id
ZONE_EXTRA_PARAMS="status=active&page=1&per_page=20&order=status&direction=desc&match=all"
ZONE_ID=$(curl -s -X GET "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones?name=$DOMAIN&$ZONE_EXTRA_PARAMS" \

     -H     "X-Auth-Email: $EMAIL" \

     -H     "X-Auth-Key: $API_KEY" \

     -H     "Content-Type: application/json" | python -c "import sys,json;print(json.load(sys.stdin)['result'][0]['id'])")
# Create TXT record
CREATE_DOMAIN="_acme-challenge.$CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER"
RECORD_ID=$(curl -s -X POST "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/$ZONE_ID/dns_records" \

     -H     "X-Auth-Email: $EMAIL" \

     -H     "X-Auth-Key: $API_KEY" \

     -H     "Content-Type: application/json" \

     --data '{"type":"TXT","name":"'"$CREATE_DOMAIN"'","content":"'"$CERTBOT_VALIDATION"'","ttl":120}' \

             | python -c "import sys,json;print(json.load(sys.stdin)['result']['id'])")
# Save info for cleanup
if [ ! -d /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER ];then

        mkdir -m 0700 /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER
fi
echo $ZONE_ID > /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER/ZONE_ID
echo $RECORD_ID > /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER/RECORD_ID
# Sleep to make sure the change has time to propagate over to DNS
sleep 25
```

/path/to/dns/cleanup.sh

```
#!/bin/bash
# Get your API key from https://www.cloudflare.com/a/account/my-account
API_KEY="your-api-key"
EMAIL="your.email@example.com"
if [ -f /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER/ZONE_ID ]; then

        ZONE_ID=$(cat /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER/ZONE_ID)

        rm -f /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER/ZONE_ID
fi
if [ -f /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER/RECORD_ID ]; then

        RECORD_ID=$(cat /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER/RECORD_ID)

        rm -f /tmp/CERTBOT_$CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER/RECORD_ID
fi
# Remove the challenge TXT record from the zone
if [ -n "${ZONE_ID}" ]; then

    if [ -n "${RECORD_ID}" ]; then

        curl -s -X DELETE "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/$ZONE_ID/dns_records/$RECORD_ID" \

                -H "X-Auth-Email: $EMAIL" \

                -H "X-Auth-Key: $API_KEY" \

                -H "Content-Type: application/json"

    fi
fi
```

### Changing the ACME Server
By default, Certbot uses Let's Encrypt's production server at <https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory>. You can tell Certbot to use a different CA by providing --server on the command line or in a configuration file with the URL of the server's ACME directory. For example, if you would like to use Let's Encrypt's staging server, you would add --server https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory to the command line.

Note:

--dry-run uses the Let's Encrypt staging server, unless --server is specified on the CLI or in the cli.ini configuration file. Take caution when using --dry-run with a custom server, as it may cause real certificates to be issued and discarded.

If Certbot does not trust the SSL certificate used by the ACME server, you can use the REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE <https://requests.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/advanced/#ssl-cert-verification> environment variable to override the root certificates trusted by Certbot. Certbot uses the requests library, which does not use the operating system trusted root store. Make sure that REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE is set globally in the environment and not only on the CLI, or scheduled renewal will not succeed.

### Lock Files
When processing a validation Certbot writes a number of lock files on your system to prevent multiple instances from overwriting each other's changes. This means that by default two instances of Certbot will not be able to run in parallel.

Since the directories used by Certbot are configurable, Certbot will write a lock file for all of the directories it uses. This include Certbot's --work-dir, --logs-dir, and --config-dir. By default these are /var/lib/letsencrypt, /var/log/letsencrypt, and /etc/letsencrypt respectively. Additionally if you are using Certbot with Apache or nginx it will lock the configuration folder for that program, which are typically also in the /etc directory.

Note that these lock files will only prevent other instances of Certbot from using those directories, not other processes. If you'd like to run multiple instances of Certbot simultaneously you should specify different directories as the --work-dir, --logs-dir, and --config-dir for each instance of Certbot that you would like to run.

### Configuration file
Certbot accepts a global configuration file that applies its options to all invocations of Certbot. Certificate-specific configuration choices are stored in the .conf files that can be found in /etc/letsencrypt/renewal. See Modifying the Renewal Configuration of Existing Certificates for more information about modifying certificate-specific options. Note that it is not recommended to modify these certificate-specific renewal configuration files manually.

By default no cli.ini file is created (though it may exist already if you installed Certbot via a package manager, for instance). After creating one it is possible to specify the location of this configuration file with certbot --config cli.ini (or shorter -c cli.ini). An example configuration file is shown below:

```
# This is an example of the kind of things you can do in a configuration file.
# All flags used by the client can be configured here. Run Certbot with
# "--help" to learn more about the available options.
#
# Note that these options apply automatically to all use of Certbot for
# obtaining or renewing certificates, so options specific to a single
# certificate on a system with several certificates should not be placed
# here.
# Use ECC for the private key
key-type = ecdsa
elliptic-curve = secp384r1
# Use a 4096 bit RSA key instead of 2048
rsa-key-size = 4096
# Uncomment and update to register with the specified e-mail address
# email = foo@example.com
# Uncomment to use the standalone authenticator on port 80
# authenticator = standalone
# Uncomment to use the webroot authenticator. Replace webroot-path with the
# path to the public_html / webroot folder being served by your web server.
# authenticator = webroot
# webroot-path = /usr/share/nginx/html
# Uncomment to automatically agree to the terms of service of the ACME server
# agree-tos = true
# An example of using an alternate ACME server that uses EAB credentials
# server = https://acme.sectigo.com/v2/InCommonRSAOV
# eab-kid = somestringofstuffwithoutquotes
# eab-hmac-key = yaddayaddahexhexnotquoted
```

By default, the following locations are searched:

- /etc/letsencrypt/cli.ini

- $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/letsencrypt/cli.ini (or ~/.config/letsencrypt/cli.ini if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set).

Since this configuration file applies to all invocations of certbot it is incorrect to list domains in it. Listing domains in cli.ini may prevent renewal from working. Additionally due to how arguments in cli.ini are parsed, options which wish to not be set should not be listed. Options set to false will instead be read as being set to true by older versions of Certbot, since they have been listed in the config file.

### Log Rotation
By default certbot stores status logs in /var/log/letsencrypt. By default certbot will begin rotating logs once there are 1000 logs in the log directory. Meaning that once 1000 files are in /var/log/letsencrypt Certbot will delete the oldest one to make room for new logs. The number of subsequent logs can be changed by passing the desired number to the command line flag --max-log-backups. Setting this flag to 0 disables log rotation entirely, causing certbot to always append to the same log file.

Note:

Some distributions, including Debian and Ubuntu, disable certbot's internal log rotation in favor of a more traditional logrotate script. If you are using a distribution's packages and want to alter the log rotation, check /etc/logrotate.d/ for a certbot rotation script.

### Certbot command-line options
Certbot supports a lot of command line options. Here's the full list, from certbot --help all:

```
usage:

  certbot [SUBCOMMAND] [options] [-d DOMAIN] [-d DOMAIN] ...
Certbot can obtain and install HTTPS/TLS/SSL certificates.  By default,
it will attempt to use a webserver both for obtaining and installing the
certificate. The most common SUBCOMMANDS and flags are:
obtain, install, and renew certificates:

    (default) run   Obtain & install a certificate in your current webserver

    certonly        Obtain or renew a certificate, but do not install it

    renew           Renew all previously obtained certificates that are near expiry

    enhance         Add security enhancements to your existing configuration

   -d DOMAINS       Comma-separated list of domains to obtain a certificate for

  --apache          Use the Apache plugin for authentication & installation

  --standalone      Run a standalone webserver for authentication

  --nginx           Use the Nginx plugin for authentication & installation

  --webroot         Place files in a server's webroot folder for authentication

  --manual          Obtain certificates interactively, or using shell script hooks

   -n               Run non-interactively

  --test-cert       Obtain a test certificate from a staging server

  --dry-run         Test "renew" or "certonly" without saving any certificates to disk
manage certificates:

    certificates    Display information about certificates you have from Certbot

    revoke          Revoke a certificate (supply --cert-name or --cert-path)

    delete          Delete a certificate (supply --cert-name)

    reconfigure     Update a certificate's configuration (supply --cert-name)
manage your account:

    register        Create an ACME account

    unregister      Deactivate an ACME account

    update_account  Update an ACME account

    show_account    Display account details

  --agree-tos       Agree to the ACME server's Subscriber Agreement

   -m EMAIL         Email address for important account notifications
options:

  -h, --help            show this help message and exit

  -c CONFIG_FILE, --config CONFIG_FILE

                        path to config file (default: /etc/letsencrypt/cli.ini

                        and ~/.config/letsencrypt/cli.ini)

  -v, --verbose         This flag can be used multiple times to incrementally

                        increase the verbosity of output, e.g. -vvv. (default:

                        0)

  --max-log-backups MAX_LOG_BACKUPS

                        Specifies the maximum number of backup logs that

                        should be kept by Certbot's built in log rotation.

                        Setting this flag to 0 disables log rotation entirely,

                        causing Certbot to always append to the same log file.

                        (default: 1000)

  -n, --non-interactive, --noninteractive

                        Run without ever asking for user input. This may

                        require additional command line flags; the client will

                        try to explain which ones are required if it finds one

                        missing (default: False)

  --force-interactive   Force Certbot to be interactive even if it detects

                        it's not being run in a terminal. This flag cannot be

                        used with the renew subcommand. (default: False)

  -d DOMAIN, --domains DOMAIN, --domain DOMAIN

                        Domain names to include. For multiple domains you can

                        use multiple -d flags or enter a comma separated list

                        of domains as a parameter. All domains will be

                        included as Subject Alternative Names on the

                        certificate. The first domain will be used as the

                        certificate name, unless otherwise specified or if you

                        already have a certificate with the same name. In the

                        case of a name conflict, a number like -0001 will be

                        appended to the certificate name. (default: Ask)

  --ip-address IP_ADDRESSES

                        IP addresses to include. For multiple IP addresses you

                        can use multiple --ip-address flags. All IP addresses

                        will be included as Subject Alternative Names on the

                        certificate. (default: [])

  --eab-kid EAB_KID     Key Identifier for External Account Binding (default:

                        None)

  --eab-hmac-key EAB_HMAC_KEY

                        HMAC key for External Account Binding (default: None)

  --eab-hmac-alg EAB_HMAC_ALG

                        HMAC algorithm for External Account Binding (default:

                        HS256)

  --cert-name CERTNAME  Certificate name to apply. This name is used by

                        Certbot for housekeeping and in file paths; it doesn't

                        affect the content of the certificate itself.

                        Certificate name cannot contain filepath separators

                        (i.e. '/' or '\', depending on the platform). To see

                        certificate names, run 'certbot certificates'. When

                        creating a new certificate, specifies the new

                        certificate's name. (default: the first provided

                        domain or the name of an existing certificate on your

                        system for the same domains)

  --dry-run             Perform a test run against the Let's Encrypt staging

                        server, obtaining test (invalid) certificates but not

                        saving them to disk. This can only be used with the

                        'certonly' and 'renew' subcommands. It may trigger

                        webserver reloads to temporarily modify & roll back

                        configuration files. --pre-hook and --post-hook

                        commands run by default. --deploy-hook commands do not

                        run, unless enabled by --run-deploy-hooks. The test

                        server may be overridden with --server. (default:

                        False)

  --debug-challenges    After setting up challenges, wait for user input

                        before submitting to CA. When used in combination with

                        the `-v` option, the challenge URLs or FQDNs and their

                        expected return values are shown. (default: False)

  --required-profile REQUIRED_PROFILE

                        Request the given profile name from the ACME server.

                        If the ACME server returns an error, issuance (or

                        renewal) will fail. For long-term reliability, setting

                        preferred_profile instead may be preferable because it

                        allows fallback to a default. Use this setting when

                        renewal failure is preferable to fallback. (default:

                        None)

  --preferred-profile PREFERRED_PROFILE

                        Request the given profile name from the ACME server,

                        or fallback to default. If the given profile name

                        exists in the ACME directory, use it to request a a

                        certificate. Otherwise, fall back to requesting a

                        certificate without a profile (which means the CA will

                        use its default profile). This allows renewals to

                        succeed even if the CA deprecates and removes a given

                        profile. (default: None)

  --preferred-chain PREFERRED_CHAIN

                        Set the preferred certificate chain. If the CA offers

                        multiple certificate chains, prefer the chain whose

                        topmost certificate was issued from this Subject

                        Common Name. If no match, the default offered chain

                        will be used. (default: None)

  --preferred-challenges PREF_CHALLS

                        A sorted, comma delimited list of the preferred

                        challenge to use during authorization with the most

                        preferred challenge listed first (Eg, "dns" or

                        "http,dns"). Not all plugins support all challenges.

                        See https://certbot.eff.org/docs/using.html#plugins

                        for details. ACME Challenges are versioned, but if you

                        pick "http" rather than "http-01", Certbot will select

                        the latest version automatically. (default: [])

  --issuance-timeout ISSUANCE_TIMEOUT

                        This option specifies how long (in seconds) Certbot

                        will wait for the server to issue a certificate.

                        (default: 90)

  --user-agent USER_AGENT

                        Set a custom user agent string for the client. User

                        agent strings allow the CA to collect high level

                        statistics about success rates by OS, plugin and use

                        case, and to know when to deprecate support for past

                        Python versions and flags. If you wish to hide this

                        information from the Let's Encrypt server, set this to

                        "". (default: CertbotACMEClient/5.6.0 (certbot;

                        OS_NAME OS_VERSION) Authenticator/XXX Installer/YYY

                        (SUBCOMMAND; flags: FLAGS) Py/major.minor.patchlevel).

                        The flags encoded in the user agent are: --duplicate,

                        --force-renew, --allow-subset-of-names, -n, and

                        whether any hooks are set.

  --user-agent-comment USER_AGENT_COMMENT

                        Add a comment to the default user agent string. May be

                        used when repackaging Certbot or calling it from

                        another tool to allow additional statistical data to

                        be collected. Ignored if --user-agent is set.

                        (Example: Foo-Wrapper/1.0) (default: None)
automation:

  Flags for automating execution & other tweaks

  --keep-until-expiring, --keep, --reinstall

                        If the requested certificate matches an existing

                        certificate, always keep the existing one until it is

                        due for renewal (for the 'run' subcommand this means

                        reinstall the existing certificate). (default: Ask)

  --expand              If an existing certificate is a strict subset of the

                        requested names, always expand and replace it with the

                        additional names. (default: Ask)

  --version             show program's version number and exit

  --force-renewal, --renew-by-default

                        If a certificate already exists for the requested

                        domains, renew it now, regardless of whether it is

                        near expiry. (Often --keep-until-expiring is more

                        appropriate). Also implies --expand. (default: False)

  --renew-with-new-domains

                        If a certificate already exists for the requested

                        certificate name but does not match the requested

                        domains, renew it now, regardless of whether it is

                        near expiry. (default: False)

  --reuse-key           When renewing, use the same private key as the

                        existing certificate. (default: False)

  --no-reuse-key        When renewing, do not use the same private key as the

                        existing certificate. Not reusing private keys is the

                        default behavior of Certbot. This option may be used

                        to unset --reuse-key on an existing certificate.

                        (default: False)

  --new-key             When renewing or replacing a certificate, generate a

                        new private key, even if --reuse-key is set on the

                        existing certificate. Combining --new-key and --reuse-

                        key will result in the private key being replaced and

                        then reused in future renewals. (default: False)

  --allow-subset-of-names

                        When performing domain validation, do not consider it

                        a failure if authorizations can not be obtained for a

                        strict subset of the requested domains. This may be

                        useful for allowing renewals for multiple domains to

                        succeed even if some domains no longer point at this

                        system. This option cannot be used with --csr.

                        (default: False)

  --agree-tos           Agree to the ACME Subscriber Agreement (default: Ask)

  --duplicate           Allow making a certificate lineage that duplicates an

                        existing one (both can be renewed in parallel)

                        (default: False)

  -q, --quiet           Silence all output except errors. Useful for

                        automation via cron. Implies --non-interactive.

                        (default: False)
security:

  Security parameters & server settings

  --rsa-key-size N      Size of the RSA key. (default: 2048)

  --key-type {rsa,ecdsa}

                        Type of generated private key. Only *ONE* per

                        invocation can be provided at this time. (default:

                        ecdsa)

  --elliptic-curve N    The SECG elliptic curve name to use. Please see RFC

                        8446 for supported values. (default: secp256r1)

  --must-staple         Adds the OCSP Must-Staple extension to the

                        certificate. Autoconfigures OCSP Stapling for

                        supported setups (Apache version >= 2.3.3 ). (default:

                        False)

  --redirect            Automatically redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS for

                        the newly authenticated vhost. (default: redirect

                        enabled for install and run, disabled for enhance)

  --no-redirect         Do not automatically redirect all HTTP traffic to

                        HTTPS for the newly authenticated vhost. (default:

                        redirect enabled for install and run, disabled for

                        enhance)

  --hsts                Add the Strict-Transport-Security header to every HTTP

                        response. Forcing browser to always use SSL for the

                        domain. Defends against SSL Stripping. (default:

                        False)

  --uir                 Add the "Content-Security-Policy: upgrade-insecure-

                        requests" header to every HTTP response. Forcing the

                        browser to use https:// for every http:// resource.

                        (default: False)

  --staple-ocsp         Enables OCSP Stapling. A valid OCSP response is

                        stapled to the certificate that the server offers

                        during TLS. (default: False)

  --strict-permissions  Require that all configuration files are owned by the

                        current user; only needed if your config is somewhere

                        unsafe like /tmp/ (default: False)

  --auto-hsts           Gradually increasing max-age value for HTTP Strict

                        Transport Security security header (default: False)
testing:

  The following flags are meant for testing and integration purposes only.

  --run-deploy-hooks    When performing a test run using `--dry-run` or

                        `reconfigure`, run any applicable deploy hooks. This

                        includes hooks set on the command line, saved in the

                        certificate's renewal configuration file, or present

                        in the renewal-hooks directory. To exclude directory

                        hooks, use --no-directory-hooks. The hook(s) will only

                        be run if the dry run succeeds, and will use the

                        current active certificate, not the temporary test

                        certificate acquired during the dry run. This flag is

                        recommended when modifying the deploy hook using

                        `reconfigure`. (default: False)

  --test-cert, --staging

                        Use the Let's Encrypt staging server to obtain or

                        revoke test (invalid) certificates; equivalent to

                        --server https://acme-

                        staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory (default:

                        False)

  --debug               Show tracebacks in case of errors (default: False)

  --no-verify-ssl       Disable verification of the ACME server's certificate.

                        The root certificates trusted by Certbot can be

                        overridden by setting the REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE

                        environment variable. (default: False)

  --http-01-port HTTP01_PORT

                        Port used in the http-01 challenge. This only affects

                        the port Certbot listens on. A conforming ACME server

                        will still attempt to connect on port 80. (default:

                        80)

  --http-01-address HTTP01_ADDRESS

                        The address the server listens to during http-01

                        challenge. (default: )

  --https-port HTTPS_PORT

                        Port used to serve HTTPS. This affects which port

                        Nginx will listen on after a LE certificate is

                        installed. (default: 443)

  --break-my-certs      Be willing to replace or renew valid certificates with

                        invalid (testing/staging) certificates (default:

                        False)
paths:

  Flags for changing execution paths & servers

  --cert-path CERT_PATH

                        Path to where certificate is saved (with certonly

                        --csr), installed from, or revoked (default: None)

  --key-path KEY_PATH   Path to private key for certificate installation or

                        revocation (if account key is missing) (default: None)

  --fullchain-path FULLCHAIN_PATH

                        Accompanying path to a full certificate chain

                        (certificate plus chain). (default: None)

  --chain-path CHAIN_PATH

                        Accompanying path to a certificate chain. (default:

                        None)

  --config-dir CONFIG_DIR

                        Configuration directory. (default: /etc/letsencrypt)

  --work-dir WORK_DIR   Working directory. (default: /var/lib/letsencrypt)

  --logs-dir LOGS_DIR   Logs directory. (default: /var/log/letsencrypt)

  --server SERVER       ACME Directory Resource URI. (default:

                        https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory)
manage:

  Various subcommands and flags are available for managing your

  certificates:

  certificates          List certificates managed by Certbot

  delete                Clean up all files related to a certificate

  renew                 Renew all certificates (or one specified with --cert-

                        name)

  revoke                Revoke a certificate specified with --cert-path or

                        --cert-name

  reconfigure           Update renewal configuration for a certificate

                        specified by --cert-name
run:

  Options for obtaining & installing certificates
certonly:

  Options for modifying how a certificate is obtained

  --deploy-hook DEPLOY_HOOK

                        Command to be run in a shell once for each

                        successfully issued certificate, including on

                        subsequent renewals. Unless --disable-hook-validation

                        is used, the command’s first word must be the absolute

                        pathname of an executable or one found via the PATH

                        environment variable. For this command, the shell

                        variable $RENEWED_LINEAGE will point to the config

                        live subdirectory (for example,

                        "/etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com") containing the

                        new certificates and keys; the shell variable

                        $RENEWED_DOMAINS will contain a space-delimited list

                        of renewed certificate domains (for example,

                        "example.com www.example.com") (default: None)

  --csr CSR             Path to a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) in DER or

                        PEM format. Currently --csr only works with the

                        'certonly' subcommand. (default: None)
renew:

  The 'renew' subcommand will attempt to renew any certificates previously

  obtained if they are close to expiry, and print a summary of the results.

  By default, 'renew' will reuse the plugins and options used to obtain or

  most recently renew each certificate. You can test whether future renewals

  will succeed with `--dry-run`. Individual certificates can be renewed with

  the `--cert-name` option. Hooks are available to run commands before and

  after renewal; see https://certbot.eff.org/docs/using.html#renewal for

  more information on these.

  --pre-hook PRE_HOOK   Command to be run in a shell before obtaining any

                        certificates. Unless --disable-hook-validation is

                        used, the command’s first word must be the absolute

                        pathname of an executable or one found via the PATH

                        environment variable. Intended primarily for renewal,

                        where it can be used to temporarily shut down a

                        webserver that might conflict with the standalone

                        plugin. This will only be called if a certificate is

                        actually to be obtained/renewed. When renewing several

                        certificates that have identical pre-hooks, only the

                        first will be executed. (default: None)

  --post-hook POST_HOOK

                        Command to be run in a shell after attempting to

                        obtain/renew certificates. Unless --disable-hook-

                        validation is used, the command’s first word must be

                        the absolute pathname of an executable or one found

                        via the PATH environment variable. Can be used to

                        deploy renewed certificates, or to restart any servers

                        that were stopped by --pre-hook. This is only run if

                        an attempt was made to obtain/renew a certificate. If

                        multiple renewed certificates have identical post-

                        hooks, only one will be run. (default: None)

  --disable-hook-validation

                        Ordinarily the commands specified for --pre-

                        hook/--post-hook/--deploy-hook will be checked for

                        validity, to see if the programs being run are in the

                        $PATH, so that mistakes can be caught early, even when

                        the hooks aren't being run just yet. The validation is

                        rather simplistic and fails if you use more advanced

                        shell constructs, so you can use this switch to

                        disable it. (default: False)

  --no-directory-hooks  Disable running executables found in Certbot's hook

                        directories. (default: False)

  --disable-renew-updates

                        Disable automatic updates to your server configuration

                        that would otherwise be done by the selected installer

                        plugin, and triggered when the user executes "certbot

                        renew", regardless of if the certificate is renewed.

                        This setting does not apply to important TLS

                        configuration updates. (default: False)

  --no-autorenew        Disable auto renewal of certificates. (default: False)
certificates:

  List certificates managed by Certbot
delete:

  Options for deleting a certificate
revoke:

  Options for revocation of certificates

  --reason {unspecified,keycompromise,affiliationchanged,superseded,cessationofoperation}

                        Specify reason for revoking certificate. (default:

                        unspecified)

  --delete-after-revoke

                        Delete certificates after revoking them, along with

                        all previous and later versions of those certificates.

                        (default: Ask)

  --no-delete-after-revoke

                        Do not delete certificates after revoking them. This

                        option should be used with caution because the 'renew'

                        subcommand will attempt to renew undeleted revoked

                        certificates. (default: Ask)
register:

  Options for account registration

  -m EMAIL, --email EMAIL

                        Email used for registration and recovery contact. Use

                        comma to register multiple emails, ex:

                        u1@example.com,u2@example.com. (default: Ask).

  --eff-email           Share your e-mail address with EFF (default: Ask)

  --no-eff-email        Don't share your e-mail address with EFF (default:

                        Ask)
update_account:

  Options for account modification
unregister:

  Options for account deactivation.

  --account ACCOUNT_ID  Account ID to use (default: None)
install:

  Options for modifying how a certificate is deployed
rollback:

  Options for rolling back server configuration changes

  --checkpoints N       Revert configuration N number of checkpoints.

                        (default: 1)
plugins:

  Options for the "plugins" subcommand

  --init                Initialize plugins. (default: False)

  --prepare             Initialize and prepare plugins. (default: False)

  --authenticators      Limit to authenticator plugins only. (default: None)

  --installers          Limit to installer plugins only. (default: None)
enhance:

  Helps to harden the TLS configuration by adding security enhancements to

  already existing configuration.
show_account:

  Options useful for the "show_account" subcommand:
reconfigure:

  Common options that may be updated with the "reconfigure" subcommand:
plugins:

  Plugin Selection: Certbot client supports an extensible plugins

  architecture. See 'certbot plugins' for a list of all installed plugins

  and their names. You can force a particular plugin by setting options

  provided below. Running --help <plugin_name> will list flags specific to

  that plugin.

  --configurator CONFIGURATOR

                        Name of the plugin that is both an authenticator and

                        an installer. Should not be used together with

                        --authenticator or --installer. (default: Ask)

  -a AUTHENTICATOR, --authenticator AUTHENTICATOR

                        Authenticator plugin name. (default: None)

  -i INSTALLER, --installer INSTALLER

                        Installer plugin name (also used to find domains).

                        (default: None)

  --apache              Obtain and install certificates using Apache (default:

                        False)

  --nginx               Obtain and install certificates using Nginx (default:

                        False)

  --standalone          Obtain certificates using a "standalone" webserver.

                        (default: False)

  --manual              Provide laborious manual instructions for obtaining a

                        certificate (default: False)

  --webroot             Obtain certificates by placing files in a webroot

                        directory. (default: False)

  --dns-cloudflare      Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are

                        using Cloudflare for DNS). (default: False)

  --dns-digitalocean    Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are

                        using DigitalOcean for DNS). (default: False)

  --dns-dnsimple        Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are

                        using DNSimple for DNS). (default: False)

  --dns-dnsmadeeasy     Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are

                        using DNS Made Easy for DNS). (default: False)

  --dns-gehirn          Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are

                        using Gehirn Infrastructure Service for DNS).

                        (default: False)

  --dns-google          Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are

                        using Google Cloud DNS). (default: False)

  --dns-linode          Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are

                        using Linode for DNS). (default: False)

  --dns-luadns          Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are

                        using LuaDNS for DNS). (default: False)

  --dns-nsone           Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are

                        using NS1 for DNS). (default: False)

  --dns-ovh             Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are

                        using OVH for DNS). (default: False)

  --dns-rfc2136         Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are

                        using BIND for DNS). (default: False)

  --dns-route53         Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are

                        using Route53 for DNS). (default: False)

  --dns-sakuracloud     Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are

                        using Sakura Cloud for DNS). (default: False)
apache:

  Apache Web Server plugin (Please note that the default values of the

  Apache plugin options change depending on the operating system Certbot is

  run on.)

  --apache-enmod APACHE_ENMOD

                        Path to the Apache 'a2enmod' binary (default: None)

  --apache-dismod APACHE_DISMOD

                        Path to the Apache 'a2dismod' binary (default: None)

  --apache-le-vhost-ext APACHE_LE_VHOST_EXT

                        SSL vhost configuration extension (default: -le-

                        ssl.conf)

  --apache-server-root APACHE_SERVER_ROOT

                        Apache server root directory (default: /etc/apache2)

  --apache-vhost-root APACHE_VHOST_ROOT

                        Apache server VirtualHost configuration root (default:

                        None)

  --apache-logs-root APACHE_LOGS_ROOT

                        Apache server logs directory (default:

                        /var/log/apache2)

  --apache-challenge-location APACHE_CHALLENGE_LOCATION

                        Directory path for challenge configuration (default:

                        /etc/apache2)

  --apache-handle-modules APACHE_HANDLE_MODULES

                        Let installer handle enabling required modules for you

                        (Only Ubuntu/Debian currently) (default: False)

  --apache-handle-sites APACHE_HANDLE_SITES

                        Let installer handle enabling sites for you (Only

                        Ubuntu/Debian currently) (default: False)

  --apache-ctl APACHE_CTL

                        Full path to Apache control script (default:

                        apache2ctl)

  --apache-bin APACHE_BIN

                        Full path to apache2/httpd binary (default: None)
dns-cloudflare:

  Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using Cloudflare

  for DNS).

  --dns-cloudflare-propagation-seconds DNS_CLOUDFLARE_PROPAGATION_SECONDS

                        The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate

                        before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS

                        record. (default: 10)

  --dns-cloudflare-credentials DNS_CLOUDFLARE_CREDENTIALS

                        Cloudflare credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-digitalocean:

  Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using DigitalOcean

  for DNS).

  --dns-digitalocean-propagation-seconds DNS_DIGITALOCEAN_PROPAGATION_SECONDS

                        The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate

                        before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS

                        record. (default: 10)

  --dns-digitalocean-credentials DNS_DIGITALOCEAN_CREDENTIALS

                        DigitalOcean credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-dnsimple:

  Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using DNSimple for

  DNS).

  --dns-dnsimple-propagation-seconds DNS_DNSIMPLE_PROPAGATION_SECONDS

                        The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate

                        before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS

                        record. (default: 30)

  --dns-dnsimple-credentials DNS_DNSIMPLE_CREDENTIALS

                        DNSimple credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-dnsmadeeasy:

  Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using DNS Made Easy

  for DNS).

  --dns-dnsmadeeasy-propagation-seconds DNS_DNSMADEEASY_PROPAGATION_SECONDS

                        The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate

                        before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS

                        record. (default: 60)

  --dns-dnsmadeeasy-credentials DNS_DNSMADEEASY_CREDENTIALS

                        DNS Made Easy credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-gehirn:

  Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using Gehirn

  Infrastructure Service for DNS).

  --dns-gehirn-propagation-seconds DNS_GEHIRN_PROPAGATION_SECONDS

                        The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate

                        before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS

                        record. (default: 30)

  --dns-gehirn-credentials DNS_GEHIRN_CREDENTIALS

                        Gehirn Infrastructure Service credentials file.

                        (default: None)
dns-google:

  Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using Google Cloud

  DNS for DNS).

  --dns-google-propagation-seconds DNS_GOOGLE_PROPAGATION_SECONDS

                        The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate

                        before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS

                        record. (default: 60)

  --dns-google-credentials DNS_GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS

                        Path to Google Cloud DNS service account JSON file to

                        use instead of relying on Application Default

                        Credentials (ADC). (See https://cloud.google.com/docs/

                        authentication/application-default-credentials for

                        information about ADC, https://developers.google.com/i

                        dentity/protocols/OAuth2ServiceAccount#creatinganaccou

                        nt for information about creating a service account,

                        and https://cloud.google.com/dns/access-

                        control#permissions_and_roles for information about

                        the permissions required to modify Cloud DNS records.)

                        (default: None)

  --dns-google-project DNS_GOOGLE_PROJECT

                        The ID of the Google Cloud project that the Google

                        Cloud DNS managed zone(s) reside in. This will be

                        determined automatically if not specified. (default:

                        None)
dns-linode:

  Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using Linode for

  DNS).

  --dns-linode-propagation-seconds DNS_LINODE_PROPAGATION_SECONDS

                        The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate

                        before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS

                        record. (default: 120)

  --dns-linode-credentials DNS_LINODE_CREDENTIALS

                        Linode credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-luadns:

  Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using LuaDNS for

  DNS).

  --dns-luadns-propagation-seconds DNS_LUADNS_PROPAGATION_SECONDS

                        The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate

                        before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS

                        record. (default: 30)

  --dns-luadns-credentials DNS_LUADNS_CREDENTIALS

                        LuaDNS credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-nsone:

  Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using NS1 for DNS).

  --dns-nsone-propagation-seconds DNS_NSONE_PROPAGATION_SECONDS

                        The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate

                        before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS

                        record. (default: 30)

  --dns-nsone-credentials DNS_NSONE_CREDENTIALS

                        NS1 credentials file. (default: None)
dns-ovh:

  Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using OVH for DNS).

  --dns-ovh-propagation-seconds DNS_OVH_PROPAGATION_SECONDS

                        The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate

                        before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS

                        record. (default: 120)

  --dns-ovh-credentials DNS_OVH_CREDENTIALS

                        OVH credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-rfc2136:

  Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using BIND for

  DNS).

  --dns-rfc2136-propagation-seconds DNS_RFC2136_PROPAGATION_SECONDS

                        The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate

                        before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS

                        record. (default: 60)

  --dns-rfc2136-credentials DNS_RFC2136_CREDENTIALS

                        RFC 2136 credentials INI file. (default: None)
dns-route53:

  Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using AWS Route53

  for DNS).
dns-sakuracloud:

  Obtain certificates using a DNS TXT record (if you are using Sakura Cloud

  for DNS).

  --dns-sakuracloud-propagation-seconds DNS_SAKURACLOUD_PROPAGATION_SECONDS

                        The number of seconds to wait for DNS to propagate

                        before asking the ACME server to verify the DNS

                        record. (default: 90)

  --dns-sakuracloud-credentials DNS_SAKURACLOUD_CREDENTIALS

                        Sakura Cloud credentials file. (default: None)
manual:

  Authenticate through manual configuration or custom shell scripts. When

  using shell scripts, an authenticator script must be provided. The

  environment variables available to this script depend on the type of

  challenge. $CERTBOT_IDENTIFIER will always contain the domain or IP

  address being authenticated. For HTTP-01 and DNS-01, $CERTBOT_VALIDATION

  is the validation string, and $CERTBOT_TOKEN is the filename of the

  resource requested when performing an HTTP-01 challenge. An additional

  cleanup script can also be provided and can use the additional variable

  $CERTBOT_AUTH_OUTPUT which contains the stdout output from the auth

  script. For both authenticator and cleanup script, on HTTP-01 and DNS-01

  challenges, $CERTBOT_REMAINING_CHALLENGES will be equal to the number of

  challenges that remain after the current one, and $CERTBOT_ALL_IDENTIFIERS

  contains a comma-separated list of all identifiers that are challenged for

  the current certificate.

  --manual-auth-hook MANUAL_AUTH_HOOK

                        Path or command to execute for the authentication

                        script (default: None)

  --manual-cleanup-hook MANUAL_CLEANUP_HOOK

                        Path or command to execute for the cleanup script

                        (default: None)
nginx:

  Nginx Web Server plugin

  --nginx-server-root NGINX_SERVER_ROOT

                        Nginx server root directory. (default: /etc/nginx or

                        /usr/local/etc/nginx)

  --nginx-ctl NGINX_CTL

                        Path to the 'nginx' binary, used for 'configtest' and

                        retrieving nginx version number. (default: nginx)

  --nginx-sleep-seconds NGINX_SLEEP_SECONDS

                        Number of seconds to wait for nginx configuration

                        changes to apply when reloading. (default: 1)
null:

  Null Installer
standalone:

  Runs an HTTP server locally which serves the necessary validation files

  under the /.well-known/acme-challenge/ request path. Suitable if there is

  no HTTP server already running. HTTP challenge only (wildcards not

  supported).
webroot:

  Saves the necessary validation files to a .well-known/acme-challenge/

  directory within the nominated webroot path. A separate HTTP server must

  be running and serving files from the webroot path. HTTP challenge only

  (wildcards not supported).

  --webroot-path WEBROOT_PATH, -w WEBROOT_PATH

                        public_html / webroot path. This can be specified

                        multiple times to handle different identifiers; each

                        identifier will have the webroot path that preceded

                        it. For instance: `-w /var/www/example -d example.com

                        -d www.example.com -w /var/www/thing -d thing.net -d

                        m.thing.net` (default: Ask)

  --webroot-map WEBROOT_MAP

                        JSON dictionary mapping identifiers to webroot paths;

                        this implies -d or --ip-address for each entry. You

                        may need to escape this from your shell. E.g.:

                        --webroot-map '{"eg1.is,m.eg1.is":"/www/eg1/",

                        "eg2.is":"/www/eg2"}' This option is merged with, but

                        takes precedence over, -w / -d entries. At present, if

                        you put webroot-map in a config file, it needs to be

                        on a single line, like: webroot-map =

                        {"example.com":"/var/www"}. (default: {})
```

### Getting help
If you're having problems, we recommend posting on the Let's Encrypt Community Forum <https://community.letsencrypt.org>.

If you find a bug in the software, please do report it in our issue tracker <https://github.com/certbot/certbot/issues>. Remember to give us as much information as possible:

- copy and paste exact command line used and the output (though mind that the latter might include some personally identifiable information, including your email and domains)

- copy and paste logs from /var/log/letsencrypt (though mind they also might contain personally identifiable information)

- copy and paste certbot --version output

- your operating system, including specific version

- specify which installation method you've chosen

## DEVELOPER GUIDE

### Table of Contents
•

Getting Started

- Running a local copy of the client

- Find issues to work on

- Testing

- Running automated unit tests

- Running automated integration tests

- Running manual integration tests

- Running tests in CI

•

Code components and layout

- Plugin-architecture

- Authenticators

- Installer

- Installer Development

- Writing your own plugin

•

Writing your own plugin snap

- Coding style

- Use certbot.compat.os instead of os

- Mypy type annotations

- Submitting a pull request

- Asking for help

- Building the Certbot and DNS plugin snaps

- Updating the documentation

- Certbot's dependencies

- Updating dependency versions

- Choosing dependency versions

•

macOS suggestions

### Getting Started
Certbot has the same system requirements <#system-requirements> when set up for development. While the section below will help you install Certbot and its dependencies, Certbot needs to be run on a UNIX-like OS so if you're using Windows, you'll need to set up a (virtual) machine running an OS such as Linux and continue with these instructions on that UNIX-like OS.

If you're using macOS, it is recommended to first check out the macOS suggestions section before continuing with the installation instructions below.

### Running a local copy of the client
Running the client in developer mode from your local tree is a little different than running Certbot as a user. To get set up, clone our git repository by running:

```
git clone https://github.com/certbot/certbot
```

If you're running on a UNIX-like OS, you can run the following commands to install dependencies and set up a virtual environment where you can run Certbot.

Install and configure the OS system dependencies required to run Certbot.

```
# For APT-based distributions (e.g. Debian, Ubuntu ...)
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-dev python3-venv libaugeas-dev gcc
# For RPM-based distributions (e.g. Fedora, CentOS ...)
# NB1: old distributions will use yum instead of dnf
# NB2: RHEL-based distributions use python3X instead of python3 (e.g. python38)
sudo dnf install python3 python3-devel augeas-devel gcc
# For macOS installations with Homebrew already installed and configured
# NB: CFLAGS are needed to compile and link to Augeas installed through
#     Homebrew and some of our developer scripts expect GNU coreutils be first in
#     your PATH. The commands below set this up for bash and zsh, but your
#     instructions may be slightly different if you use an alternate shell.
brew install augeas coreutils gnu-sed
BREW_PREFIX=$(brew --prefix)
RC_LINES="export CFLAGS=\"\$CFLAGS -I$BREW_PREFIX/include -L$BREW_PREFIX/lib\"\n"
RC_LINES+="export PATH=\"$BREW_PREFIX/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:"
RC_LINES+="$BREW_PREFIX/opt/gnu-sed/libexec/gnubin:\$PATH\"\n"
printf "$RC_LINES" >> ~/.bashrc  # for bash
printf "$RC_LINES" >> ~/.zshrc  # for zsh
```

Note:

If you have trouble creating the virtual environment below, you may need to install additional dependencies. See the cryptography project's site <https://cryptography.io/en/latest/installation.html#building-cryptography-on-linux> for more information.

Set up the Python virtual environment that will host your Certbot local instance.

```
cd certbot
python3 tools/venv.py
```

Note:

You may need to repeat this when Certbot's dependencies change or when a new plugin is introduced.

You can now run the copy of Certbot from git either by executing venv/bin/certbot, or by activating the virtual environment. You can do the latter by running:

```
source venv/bin/activate
```

After running this command, certbot and development tools like ipdb3, ipython, pytest, and tox are available in the shell where you ran the command. These tools are installed in the virtual environment and are kept separate from your global Python installation. This works by setting environment variables so the right executables are found and Python can pull in the versions of various packages needed by Certbot. More information can be found in the virtualenv docs <https://virtualenv.pypa.io>.

### Find issues to work on
You can find the open issues in the github issue tracker <https://github.com/certbot/certbot/issues>. If you're starting work on something, post a comment to let others know and seek feedback on your plan where appropriate.

Once you've got a working branch, you can open a pull request. All changes in your pull request must have thorough unit test coverage, pass our tests, and be compliant with the coding style.

### Testing
You can test your code in several ways:

- running the automated unit tests,

- running the automated integration tests

- running an ad hoc manual integration test

### Running automated unit tests
To run all unittests, mypy, and lint:

```
tox
```

If you're working on a specific test and would like to run just that one:

```
pytest acme/src/acme/_internal/tests/messages_test.py # Use the test file you're working on
```

To run a specific test case within a file:

```
pytest acme/src/acme/_internal/tests/messages_test.py -k test_to_partial_json
```

For debugging, we recommend putting import ipdb; ipdb.set_trace() statements inside the source code, which will require adding the -s flag to pytest invocations.

Warning:

The full test suite may attempt to modify your system's Apache config if your user has sudo permissions, so it should not be run on a production Apache server.

### Running automated integration tests
Generally it is sufficient to open a pull request and let Github and Azure Pipelines run integration tests for you. However, you may want to run them locally before submitting your pull request. You need Docker installed and working.

The tox environment integration will setup Pebble <https://github.com/letsencrypt/pebble>, the Let's Encrypt ACME CA server for integration testing, then launch the Certbot integration tests.

With a user allowed to access your local Docker daemon, run:

```
tox run -e integration
```

Tests will be run using pytest. A test report and a code coverage report will be displayed at the end of the integration tests execution.

### Running manual integration tests
You can also manually execute Certbot against a local instance of the Pebble <https://github.com/letsencrypt/pebble> ACME server. This is useful to verify that the modifications done to the code makes Certbot behave as expected.

To do so you need:

- Docker installed, and a user with access to the Docker client,

- an available local copy of Certbot.

The virtual environment set up with python3 tools/venv.py contains two CLI tools that can be used once the virtual environment is activated:

```
run_acme_server
```

- Starts a local instance of Pebble and runs in the foreground printing its logs.

- Press CTRL+C to stop this instance.

- This instance is configured to validate challenges against certbot executed locally.

Note:

Some options are available to tweak the local ACME server. You can execute run_acme_server --help to see the inline help of the run_acme_server tool.

```
certbot_test [ARGS...]
```

- Execute certbot with the provided arguments and other arguments useful for testing purposes, such as: verbose output, full tracebacks in case Certbot crashes, etc.

- Execution is preconfigured to interact with the Pebble CA started with run_acme_server.

- Any arguments can be passed as they would be to Certbot (eg. certbot_test certonly -d test.example.com).

Here is a typical workflow to verify that Certbot successfully issued a certificate using an HTTP-01 challenge on a machine with Python 3:

```
python3 tools/venv.py
source venv/bin/activate
run_acme_server &
certbot_test certonly --standalone -d test.example.com
# To stop Pebble, launch `fg` to get back the background job, then press CTRL+C
```

### Running tests in CI
Certbot uses Azure Pipelines to run continuous integration tests. If you are using our Azure setup, a branch whose name starts with test- will run all tests on that branch.

### Code components and layout
The following components of the Certbot repository are distributed to users:

acme

contains all protocol specific code

certbot

main client code

certbot-apache and certbot-nginx

client code to configure specific web servers

certbot-dns-*

client code to configure DNS providers

### Plugin-architecture
Certbot has a plugin architecture to facilitate support for different webservers, other TLS servers, and operating systems. The interfaces available for plugins to implement are defined in interfaces.py <https://github.com/certbot/certbot/blob/main/certbot/src/certbot/interfaces.py> and plugins/common.py <https://github.com/certbot/certbot/blob/main/certbot/src/certbot/plugins/common.py#L45>.

The main two plugin interfaces are Authenticator, which implements various ways of proving domain control to a certificate authority, and Installer, which configures a server to use a certificate once it is issued. Some plugins, like the built-in Apache and Nginx plugins, implement both interfaces and perform both tasks. Others, like the built-in Standalone authenticator, implement just one interface.

### Authenticators
Authenticators are plugins that prove control of a domain name by solving a challenge provided by the ACME server. ACME currently defines two types of challenges: HTTP and DNS, represented by classes in acme.challenges. An authenticator plugin should implement support for at least one challenge type.

An Authenticator indicates which challenges it supports by implementing get_chall_pref(identifier) to return a sorted list of challenge types in preference order.

An Authenticator must also implement perform(achalls), which "performs" a list of challenges by, for instance, provisioning a file on an HTTP server, or setting a TXT record in DNS. Once all challenges have succeeded or failed, Certbot will call the plugin's cleanup(achalls) method to remove any files or DNS records that were needed only during authentication.

### Installer
Installers plugins exist to actually setup the certificate in a server, possibly tweak the security configuration to make it more correct and secure (Fix some mixed content problems, turn on HSTS, redirect to HTTPS, etc). Installer plugins tell the main client about their abilities to do the latter via the supported_enhancements() call. We currently have two Installers in the tree, the ApacheConfigurator. and the NginxConfigurator. External projects have made some progress toward support for IIS, Icecast and Plesk.

Installers and Authenticators will oftentimes be the same class/object (because for instance both tasks can be performed by a webserver like nginx) though this is not always the case (the standalone plugin is an authenticator that listens on port 80, but it cannot install certificates; a postfix plugin would be an installer but not an authenticator).

Installers and Authenticators are kept separate because it should be possible to use the StandaloneAuthenticator (it sets up its own Python server to perform challenges) with a program that cannot solve challenges itself (Such as MTA installers).

### Installer Development
There are a few existing classes that may be beneficial while developing a new Installer. Installers aimed to reconfigure UNIX servers may use Augeas for configuration parsing and can inherit from AugeasConfigurator class to handle much of the interface. Installers that are unable to use Augeas may still find the Reverter class helpful in handling configuration checkpoints and rollback.

### Writing your own plugin
Note:

The Certbot team is not currently accepting any new plugins because we want to rethink our approach to the challenge and resolve some issues like #6464 <https://github.com/certbot/certbot/issues/6464>, #6503 <https://github.com/certbot/certbot/issues/6503>, and #6504 <https://github.com/certbot/certbot/issues/6504> first. In the meantime, you're welcome to release it as a third-party plugin. See certbot-dns-ispconfig <https://github.com/m42e/certbot-dns-ispconfig> for one example of that.

Certbot client supports dynamic discovery of plugins through the importlib.metadata entry points <https://importlib-metadata.readthedocs.io/en/latest/using.html#entry-points> using the certbot.plugins group. This way you can, for example, create a custom implementation of Authenticator or the Installer without having to merge it with the core upstream source code. An example is provided in examples/plugins/ directory.

While developing, you can install your plugin into a Certbot development virtualenv like this:

```
. venv/bin/activate
pip install -e examples/plugins/
certbot_test plugins
```

Your plugin should show up in the output of the last command. If not, it was not installed properly.

Once you've finished your plugin and published it, you can have your users install it system-wide with pip install. Note that this will only work for users who have Certbot installed from OS packages or via pip.

### Writing your own plugin snap
If you'd like your plugin to be used alongside the Certbot snap, you will also have to publish your plugin as a snap. Plugin snaps are regular confined snaps, but normally do not provide any "apps" themselves. Plugin snaps export loadable Python modules to the Certbot snap.

When the Certbot snap runs, it will use its version of Python and prefer Python modules contained in its own snap over modules contained in external snaps. This means that your snap doesn't have to contain things like an extra copy of Python, Certbot, or their dependencies, but also that if you need a different version of a dependency than is already installed in the Certbot snap, the Certbot snap will have to be updated.

Certbot plugin snaps expose their Python modules to the Certbot snap via a snap content interface <https://snapcraft.io/docs/content-interface> where certbot-1 is the value for the content attribute. The Certbot snap only uses this to find the names of connected plugin snaps and it expects to find the Python modules to be loaded under lib/python3.12/site-packages/ in the plugin snap. This location is the default when using the core24 base snap <https://snapcraft.io/docs/base-snaps> and the python snapcraft plugin <https://snapcraft.io/docs/python-plugin>.

The Certbot snap also provides a separate content interface which you can use to get metadata about the Certbot snap using the content identifier metadata-1.

The script used to generate the snapcraft.yaml files for our own externally snapped plugins can be found at <https://github.com/certbot/certbot/blob/main/tools/snap/generate_dnsplugins_snapcraft.sh>.

For more information on building externally snapped plugins, see the section on Building the Certbot and DNS plugin snaps.

Once you have created your own snap, if you have the snap file locally, it can be installed for use with Certbot by running:

```
snap install --classic certbot
snap set certbot trust-plugin-with-root=ok
snap install --dangerous your-snap-filename.snap
sudo snap connect certbot:plugin your-snap-name
sudo /snap/bin/certbot plugins
```

If everything worked, the last command should list your plugin in the list of plugins found by Certbot. Once your snap is published to the snap store, it will be installable through the name of the snap on the snap store without the --dangerous flag. If you are also using Certbot's metadata interface, you can run sudo snap connect your-snap-name:your-plug-name-for-metadata certbot:certbot-metadata to connect your snap to it.

### Coding style
Please:

1.

Be consistent with the rest of the code.

2.

Read PEP 8 - Style Guide for Python Code <https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008>.

3.

Follow the Google Python Style Guide <https://google.github.io/styleguide/pyguide.html>, with the exception that we use Sphinx-style <https://www.sphinx-doc.org/> documentation:

```
def foo(arg):

    """Short description.

    :param int arg: Some number.

    :returns: Argument

    :rtype: int

    """

    return arg
```

4.

Remember to use pylint.

5.

You may consider installing a plugin for editorconfig <https://editorconfig.org/> in your editor to prevent some linting warnings.

6.

Please avoid unittest.assertTrue or unittest.assertFalse when possible, and use assertEqual or more specific assert. They give better messages when it's failing, and are generally more correct.

### Use certbot.compat.os instead of os
Python's standard library os module lacks full support for several Windows security features about file permissions (eg. DACLs). However several files handled by Certbot (eg. private keys) need strongly restricted access on both Linux and Windows.

To help with this, the certbot.compat.os module wraps the standard os module, and forbids usage of methods that lack support for these Windows security features.

As a developer, when working on Certbot or its plugins, you must use certbot.compat.os in every place you would need os (eg. from certbot.compat import os instead of import os). Otherwise the tests will fail when your PR is submitted.

### Mypy type annotations
Certbot uses the mypy <https://mypy.readthedocs.io> static type checker. Python 3 natively supports official type annotations, which can then be tested for consistency using mypy. Mypy does some type checks even without type annotations; we can find bugs in Certbot even without a fully annotated codebase.

Zulip wrote a great guide <https://blog.zulip.org/2016/10/13/static-types-in-python-oh-mypy/> to using mypy. It’s useful, but you don’t have to read the whole thing to start contributing to Certbot.

To run mypy on Certbot, use tox run -e mypy on a machine that has Python 3 installed.

Also note that OpenSSL, which we rely on, has type definitions for crypto but not SSL. We use both. Those imports should look like this:

```
from OpenSSL import crypto
from OpenSSL import SSL
```

### Submitting a pull request
Steps:

0.

We recommend you talk with us in a GitHub issue or Mattermost before writing a pull request to ensure the changes you're making is something we have the time and interest to review.

1.

Write your code! When doing this, you should add mypy type annotations for any functions you add or modify. You can check that you've done this correctly by running tox run -e mypy on a machine that has Python 3 installed.

2.

Make sure your environment is set up properly and that you're in your virtualenv. You can do this by following the instructions in the Getting Started section.

3.

Run tox run -e lint to check for pylint errors. Fix any errors.

4.

Run tox --skip-missing-interpreters to run all the tests we recommend developers run locally. The --skip-missing-interpreters argument ignores missing versions of Python needed for running the tests. Fix any errors.

5.

If any documentation should be added or updated as part of the changes you have made, please include the documentation changes in your PR.

6.

Submit the PR. Once your PR is open, please do not force push to the branch containing your pull request to squash or amend commits. We use squash merges <https://github.com/blog/2141-squash-your-commits> on PRs and rewriting commits makes changes harder to track between reviews.

7.

Did your tests pass on Azure Pipelines? If they didn't, fix any errors.

### Asking for help
If you have any questions while working on a Certbot issue, don't hesitate to ask for help! You can do this in the Certbot channel in EFF's Mattermost instance for its open source projects as described below.

You can get involved with several of EFF's software projects such as Certbot at the EFF Open Source Contributor Chat Platform <https://opensource.eff.org/signup_user_complete/?id=6iqur37ucfrctfswrs14iscobw>. By signing up for the EFF Open Source Contributor Chat Platform, you consent to share your personal information with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is the operator and data controller for this platform. The channels will be available both to EFF, and to other users of EFFOSCCP, who may use or disclose information in these channels outside of EFFOSCCP. EFF will use your information, according to the Privacy Policy <https://www.eff.org/policy>, to further the mission of EFF, including hosting and moderating the discussions on this platform.

Use of EFFOSCCP is subject to the EFF Code of Conduct <https://www.eff.org/pages/eppcode>. When investigating an alleged Code of Conduct violation, EFF may review discussion channels or direct messages.

### Building the Certbot and DNS plugin snaps
Instructions for how to manually build and run the Certbot snap and the externally snapped DNS plugins that the Certbot project supplies are located in the README file at <https://github.com/certbot/certbot/tree/main/tools/snap>.

### Updating the documentation
Many of the packages in the Certbot repository have documentation in a docs/ directory. This directory is located under the top level directory for the package. For instance, Certbot's documentation is under certbot/docs.

To build the documentation of a package, make sure you have followed the instructions to set up a local copy of Certbot including activating the virtual environment. After that, cd to the docs directory you want to build and run the command:

```
make clean html
```

This would generate the HTML documentation in _build/html in your current docs/ directory.

### Certbot's dependencies
We attempt to pin all of Certbot's dependencies whenever we can for reliability and consistency. Some of the places we have Certbot's dependencies pinned include our snaps, Docker images, CI, and our development environments.

In most cases, the file where dependency versions are specified is tools/requirements.txt. The one exception to this is our "oldest" tests where tools/oldest_constraints.txt is used instead. The purpose of the "oldest" tests is to ensure Certbot continues to work with the oldest versions of our dependencies which we claim to support. The oldest versions of the dependencies we support should also be declared in our setup.py files to communicate this information to our users.

The choices of whether Certbot's dependencies are pinned and what file is used if they are should be automatically handled for you most of the time by Certbot's tooling. The way it works though is tools/pip_install.py (which many of our other tools build on) checks for the presence of environment variables. If CERTBOT_OLDEST is set to 1, tools/oldest_constraints.txt will be used as constraints for pip, otherwise, tools/requirements.txt is used as constraints.

### Updating dependency versions
tools/requirements.txt and tools/oldest_constraints.txt can be updated using tools/pinning/current/repin.sh and tools/pinning/oldest/repin.sh respectively. This works by using poetry to generate pinnings based on a Poetry project defined by the pyproject.toml file in the same directory as the script. In many cases, you can just run the script to generate updated dependencies, however, if you need to pin back packages or unpin packages that were previously restricted to an older version, you will need to modify the pyproject.toml file. The syntax used by this file is described at <https://python-poetry.org/docs/pyproject/> and how dependencies are specified in this file is further described at <https://python-poetry.org/docs/dependency-specification/>.

If you want to learn more about the design used here, see tools/pinning/DESIGN.md in the Certbot repo.

### Choosing dependency versions
When choosing dependency versions, we should choose whatever minimum versions simplify development of Certbot and our own distribution methods such as snaps, pip, and docker. Since these approaches have full access to PyPI, it's OK if the required packages declared in setup.py are quite new.

If this approach to development creates significant trouble for some of our users, we can revisit this decision and weigh their trouble against the difficulties involved in maintaining support for a wider range of package versions. When doing this, we should also be sure to consider the feasibility of users getting access to these newer packages on their system rather than changing our own approach here. Their OS distribution may be able to package it, especially in an alternate repository and/or for a different version of Python to help avoid conflicts with other packages on their system.

### macOS suggestions
If you're developing on macOS, before setting up your Certbot development environment, it is recommended you perform the following steps. None of this is required, but it is the approach used by all/most of the current Certbot developers on macOS as of writing this:

0.

Install Homebrew <https://brew.sh/>. It is the most popular package manager on macOS by a wide margin and works well enough.

1.

Install pyenv <https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv>, ideally through Homebrew by running brew install pyenv. Using Homebrew's Python for Certbot development is annoying because it regularly updates and every time it does it breaks your virtual environments. Using Python from pyenv avoids this problem and gives you easy access to all versions of Python.

2.

If you're using pyenv, make sure you've set up your shell for it by following instructions like <https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv?tab=readme-ov-file#set-up-your-shell-environment-for-pyenv>.

## PACKAGING GUIDE

### Releases
We release packages and upload them to PyPI (wheels and source tarballs).

- <https://pypi.org/project/acme/>

- <https://pypi.org/project/certbot/>

- <https://pypi.org/project/certbot-apache/>

- <https://pypi.org/project/certbot-nginx/>

- <https://pypi.org/project/certbot-dns-cloudflare/>

- <https://pypi.org/project/certbot-dns-digitalocean/>

- <https://pypi.org/project/certbot-dns-dnsimple/>

- <https://pypi.org/project/certbot-dns-dnsmadeeasy/>

- <https://pypi.org/project/certbot-dns-google/>

- <https://pypi.org/project/certbot-dns-linode/>

- <https://pypi.org/project/certbot-dns-luadns/>

- <https://pypi.org/project/certbot-dns-nsone/>

- <https://pypi.org/project/certbot-dns-ovh/>

- <https://pypi.org/project/certbot-dns-rfc2136/>

- <https://pypi.org/project/certbot-dns-route53/>

The following scripts are used in the process:

•

<https://github.com/certbot/certbot/blob/main/tools/release.sh>

We use git tags to identify releases, using Semantic Versioning <https://semver.org/>. For example: v0.11.1.

Since version 1.21.0, our packages are cryptographically signed by one of four PGP keys:

- BF6BCFC89E90747B9A680FD7B6029E8500F7DB16

- 86379B4F0AF371B50CD9E5FF3402831161D1D280

- 20F201346BF8F3F455A73F9A780CC99432A28621

- F2871B4152AE13C49519111F447BF683AA3B26C3`

These keys can be found on major key servers.

Releases before 1.21.0 were signed by the PGP key A2CFB51FA275A7286234E7B24D17C995CD9775F2 which can still be found on major key servers.

### Notes for package maintainers
0.

Please use our tagged releases, not main!

1.

Do not package certbot-compatibility-test as it's only used internally.

2.

To run tests on our packages, you should use pytest by running the command python -m pytest. Running pytest directly may not work because PYTHONPATH is not handled the same way and local modules may not be found by the test runner.

3.

If you'd like to include automated renewal in your package:

- certbot renew -q should be added to crontab or systemd timer.

- A random per-machine time offset should be included to avoid having a large number of your clients hit Let's Encrypt's servers simultaneously.

- --preconfigured-renewal should be included on the CLI or in cli.ini for all invocations of Certbot, so that it can adjust its interactive output regarding automated renewal (Certbot >= 1.9.0).

4.

jws is an internal script for acme module and it doesn't have to be packaged - it's mostly for debugging: you can use it as echo foo | jws sign | jws verify.

5.

Do get in touch with us. We are happy to make any changes that will make packaging easier. If you need to apply some patches don't do it downstream - make a PR here.

## BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY
All Certbot components including acme <https://acme-python.readthedocs.io/>, Certbot, and non-third party plugins <#plugins> follow Semantic Versioning <https://semver.org/> both for its Python API <> and for the application itself. This means that we will not change behavior in a backwards incompatible way except in a new major version of the project.

Note:

None of this applies to the behavior of Certbot distribution mechanisms such as our snaps <#snap-install> or OS packages whose behavior may change at any time. Semantic versioning only applies to the common Certbot components that are installed by various distribution methods.

For Certbot as an application, the command line interface and non-interactive behavior can be considered stable with two exceptions. The first is that no aspects of Certbot's console or log output should be considered stable and it may change at any time. The second is that Certbot's behavior should only be considered stable with certain files but not all. Files with which users should expect Certbot to maintain its current behavior with are:

- /etc/letsencrypt/live/$domain/{cert,chain,fullchain,privkey}.pem, where $domain is the certificate name (see Where are my certificates? <#where-certs> for more details)

- CLI configuration files <#config-file>

- Hook directories in /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks

Certbot's behavior with other files may change at any point.

Another area where Certbot should not be considered stable is its behavior when not run in non-interactive mode which also may change at any point.

In general, if we're making a change that we expect will break some users, we will bump the major version and will have warned about it in a prior release when possible. For our Python API, we will issue warnings using Python's warning module. For application level changes, we will print and log warning messages.

## RESOURCES
Documentation: <https://certbot.eff.org/docs>

Software project: <https://github.com/certbot/certbot>

Changelog: <https://github.com/certbot/certbot/blob/main/certbot/CHANGELOG.md>

For Contributors: <https://certbot.eff.org/docs/contributing.html>

For Users: <https://certbot.eff.org/docs/using.html>

Main Website: <https://certbot.eff.org>

Let's Encrypt Website: <https://letsencrypt.org>

Community: <https://community.letsencrypt.org>

ACME spec: RFC 8555 <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8555>

ACME working area in github (archived): <https://github.com/ietf-wg-acme/acme>

## API DOCUMENTATION

### certbot.util module

- Index <>

- Module Index <>

- Search Page <>

## Author
Certbot

## Copyright
2014-2018 - The Certbot software and documentation are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license as described at https://eff.org/cb-license.